Our first assignment in Microfabrication involved some basic arithmetic. Given the wafer diameter and chip size, calculate the number of chips you can put on a wafer. Then calculate cost per chip given a certain yield, and so on. Not hard, except that our professor, somewhat distracted by being locked in an interdepartmental fight to the death over funding for a scanning electron microscope, has neither covered the material in any detail, nor managed to get the textbooks into the bookstore.
I know how to hunt up information online, though. I find that Micron, in a shocking display of silliness, has similar exercises posted in their K12 education pages, except that the formulas they offer will only work on a square wafer. And the wafers, they are not square.
On the other hand, the instructor of a similar class at the University of Massachusetts (which probably already has a couple electron microscopes) has a more grown up formula and the time to post it.
Isn't it just totally wrong for a microchip company to post incorrect information about microchips? Or is Micron populated with evil geniuses who are manufacturing single-crystal silicon ingots with square cross sections?
196 words | January 26, 2005 10:08 PM | Ivory tower