🔬Hobbyists Have Photographed 356 Processor Dies Spanning 1972 to 2024
Your CPU has a secret life under a microscope
TL;DR
A handful of hobbyists, including Pauli Rautakorpi, ZeptoBars, John McMaster and Fritzchens Fritz, have photographed and shared 356 processor dies from 1972 to 2024. The collection spans Intel, Motorola, AMD and more. Useful if you want to see how chips actually look inside.
Somebody has been photographing the innards of processors for over fifty years, and the results are gorgeous. A small group of hobbyists, including Pauli Rautakorpi, ZeptoBars, John McMaster and Fritzchens Fritz, have shot 356 processor dies from 1972 to 2024 and given the images away. Why should you care? Because these photos show what your CPU actually is: a flat slab of silicon, usually smaller than a fingernail, packed with transistors. If you've ever wondered how a 68040 differs from a 486DX4 at the layout level, this is the archive you want. It's also a handy reference for anyone doing reverse engineering or hardware security research. The collection covers the Intel 8008, 8080, 8086 and Pentium, Motorola 6800 and 68040, PowerPC 603e, Alpha 21064, and UltraSPARC II. Getting the silicon out takes sanding or dissolving the package away, then photographing what's left under a microscope. The catch? Each die is a one-off, so the work is slow and very manual.
Key Points
The 8008, 6800, 8080, and 8086 from the early 1970s and late 1970s are among the earliest dies in the collection, showing how simple first-generation layouts were.
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