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FROM SAND TO CIRCUITS

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Today, silicon chips are everywhere. The task of making chips is no small feat. A modern
"fab," a building where Intel makes its chips, has close to a million square feet of space
and is among the most technically advanced manufacturing facilities in the world. Intel's
manufacturing technology—the most advanced in the world—builds on silicon wafers,
the most complex devices ever manufactured.

From sand to circuits: How Intel makes integrated circuit chips [pdf 2.25 MB] >

Silicon engines

Intel continues to add new features and functions to the tiny silicon "engines" that are at
the heart of an ever expanding, increasingly connected digital world. These silicon chips
are powering the Internet, enabling mobile computing, automating factories, enhancing
cell phones, and enriching home entertainment.
The most sophisticated silicon chip, a microprocessor, can contain hundreds of millions
or billions of transistors interconnected by fine wires made of copper. Each transistor acts
as an on/off switch, controlling the flow of electricity through the chip to send, receive
and process information in a fraction of a second. Intel's microprocessors have evolved
from single core processors to dual core and quad core processors. Quad core processors
deliver four computing "brains" inside a single package.

Design and fabrication

Designing the schematics and masks

Silicon chip manufacturing starts with design specifications that define a

chip's features. The specifications include chip size, number of transistors, testing, and
production factors. Intel then creates thousands of schematics, symbolic representations
of the transistors and interconnections that control the flow of electricity though a chip.
Physical representations, stencil-like patterns or masks are made of each layer.
Computer-aided design (CAD) workstations are used to perform comprehensive
simulations and tests of the chip functions. The average time to design, test, and fine tune
to make a chip ready for fabrication takes hundreds of people working full time for two
years.

Fabrication

Fabrication is the process for making chips. The "recipe" varies depending on the chip's
proposed use and may require as many as three hundred steps to complete fabrication.
Intel builds chips in batches on wafers in fabrication facilities or fabs. Intel uses wafers of
silicon, a natural semiconductor. The wafers are sliced from 99.9999% purified silicon
ingots and polished to a mirror smooth finish. A photolithographic "printing" process
forms a chip's multi-layered transistors and interconnects (electrical passages) on a wafer.
Hundreds of identical microprocessors are created in batches on a single silicon wafer.
Once all the layers are completed a computer performs a process called wafer sort, to
determine nonfunctioning chips and the remaining functional chips undergo a series of
tests to ensure the chip circuits meet specifications to perform as designed.

High-performance packaging
Then, the wafer is cut with a diamond saw, separating the microprocessors. Each
functioning die is assembled into a package that protects the die. This package delivers
critical power and electrical connections when placed directly on a computer circuit
board, or other devices such as cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Intel
makes chips that have many different applications so a variety of packaging technologies
are used. Intel performs reliability and electrical "tests." The chips are electrically coded,
visually inspected, packaged in protective shipping material, and readied for shipment to
Intel customers.