Jim Keller, a genius engineer who gave birth to AMD Ryzen and Apple A4, launched a semiconductor manufacturing company 'Atomic Semi'



Jim Keller, an architect involved in Apple's A4 chip and AMD's Zen microarchitecture , launched a new semiconductor manufacturing company (fab) ' Atomic Semi ' with Sam Zeruf, a self-taught semiconductor researcher. rice field.

Atomic Semi • building it ourselves
https://atomicsemi.com/



Semiconductor chips such as CPU and GPU are made from silicon (silicon). You can understand how the semiconductor chip is actually made by reading the following article.

A movie that shows 'how to make a CPU' in just 99 seconds - GIGAZINE



Of course, manufacturing semiconductors requires large-scale equipment and precision machinery for refining and polishing silicon, developing circuit patterns using ultraviolet rays and chemicals, and so on. However, Mr. Zelf has been self-taught since high school and has been manufacturing his own CPU from silicon, and has published it on his YouTube channel.

In the following movie, you can see the process of actually making your own chip Z2 with 1200 transistors designed by Mr. Zeruf. This Z2 is made with the same manufacturing method as the Intel 4004 , and the designed integrated circuit pattern is printed on a silicon wafer using the facilities and chemicals at home, developed, processed, and finally energized and checked. going.

'Z2'-Upgraded Homemade Silicon Chips-YouTube


It seems that the equipment for making these semiconductors at home is not generally available, but according to Mr. Zerufu, the environment for making your own semiconductors with a 5nm process rule is 500,000 dollars if you use the e-commerce site Alibaba Express. (About 67 million yen).



And it is Mr. Jim Keller who launched Atomic Semi in collaboration with Mr. Zeruf. Mr. Keller has been involved in the development of various chips such as AMD's Athlon , Zen microarchitecture, Apple A4, and is highly regarded as a genius engineer. increase.

The following interview held in June 2021 also touched on what kind of career and what kind of work Mr. Keller was doing.

An interview with Mr. Jim Keller, a genius engineer who went through Apple, AMD, Tesla, and Intel, was open to the public, what on earth were you doing at Intel? -GIGAZINE



At the time of writing, Atomic Semi is looking for hardware engineers, lab engineers, mechanical engineers, and process development engineers. The application guidelines describe Atomic Semi as follows: ``Atomic Semi builds small, high-speed semiconductor fabs. This manufacturing method can already be built with today's technology and some simplifications. I'm here.

According to Mr. Zerufu's tweet, the Atomic Semi project itself seems to have been underway since at least November 2022.



Atomic Semi's official Twitter account first tweeted on January 10, 2023.

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in Note,   Hardware,   Video, Posted by log1i_yk