By Joao Martins
Have you ever wondered how those tiny, but very powerful computer chips are made?
Well, it turns out there is quite a process behind it. It all starts with sand, believe it or not. The sand is then purified so that the element Silicon can be extracted from it. Silicon is the base ingredient for computer chips manufacturing. The Silicon is then put through a vigorous purifying process that makes it extremely pure. After that, the raw Silicon is melted into a big ingot that is 99.9999 percent pure. The ingots, which can be higher than five feet tall are then sliced into thin discs called wafers.
These wafers are then polished until they are like mirrors, and go through various chemical processes that get it ready for the etching process. This etching process creates groves on the wafer where data will pass through. After that, multiple metal interconnects are added.
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| Ingot Being Sliced |
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| Metal Interconnects |
These act like wires and look like a complex highway system. A processor can have over 20 layers. If the wafer passes some basic testing, it is now ready to be cut into separate pieces called dies (a wafer contains many equal dies). The individual die is then packaged into the final computer processor, where it can be used by the customer.
Source:
http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/514-intel-cpu-processor-core-i7.html#s24
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