Video of what happens in microchip

[montag451]

Years ago, I saw a video of a chip under a microscope.
It was slowed down several thousand times and it showed hundreds/thousands of 'switches' going backwards and forwards - it looked like a little city.

Anyone seen it and know where to find it?
Tried googling but ........

Want to show my daughter.
It was a really amazing piece of film.

 

[Special K]

Must have been a MEMS chip, as there are no moving parts in traditional ICs. Maybe one of those DLP array chips?

 

[BrownTown]

Are you talking about an animation of what goes on inside an IC, or some sort of actual video of a MEMS chip? None of the chips in your computer have any moving parts, the "switches" don't flip back and forth they are just charge (or the lack thereof) on the gates and there would be no technology capable of making a video that I know of .

 

[TuxDave]

I'm voting that it was a DLP array since each mirror has a more definitely "switch backwards and forwards" motion. But to help us get some context, "years ago" = how many years exactly? 2-3? 10-20?

 

[Mark R]

A scanning electron microscope might do that - not seen it done myself though.

Not in real time though. You'd need to halt the chip for a few minutes, take a frame, let the chip continue, etc.

SEMs certainly can 'see' the voltage on individual lines, transistors and capacitors - they've been used for reverse engineering chips with built in EEPROM/FLASH as they can 'see' the contents of the non-volatiile memory, even if the chip has read protection systems.

 

[montag451]

This was years ago, and they made it out to be 'real' - this was in the days before cgi, when you would have noticed if it was animated.
I know it wasn't an amd ;-)
It was probably about 8 - 12years ago.
(I know you don't 'see' things flipping back and forth - at least not in todays or yesterdays chips - )
The way the video was you could see waves of activity.

I'll keep looking and if I find it, I'll post back.

 

[CTho9305]

http://www.research.ibm.com/to.../chip/html/ldemos.html ? You don't really see flipping, but you see waves of activity...

 

[montag451]

Thats ok, but it wasn't the one I was after.
The one I saw before didn't have layers/blobs.... ;-)
Not bad though.
Thanks for the heads up.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

I remember seeing something similar in like 9th grade which would have been...15+ years ago or so. Was a "video" of a microprocessor and little switches being flipped up or down, did look like a little city.

No idea what it was from, but would like to watch it again sometime just to see what it was I was looking at.

 

[montag451]

Originally posted by: BrunoPuntzJones
I remember seeing something similar in like 9th grade which would have been...15+ years ago or so. Was a "video" of a microprocessor and little switches being flipped up or down, did look like a little city.

No idea what it was from, but would like to watch it again sometime just to see what it was I was looking at.

Thats the one. Glad I didn't dream it.