Comments on: What art is hiding on your microchip?

Not many people try looking for Waldo on a chip. But the most unlikely images can lurk among the transistors.
Photos: Chip art

[Aardasp]

Just plain "NEAT!"

Understandable, but still too bad => "A lot of chip designers told me it was absolutely forbidden. Some of them lost their jobs doing this stuff," ... <= management vary rarely has a sense of humor, their loss, !!

WOW

they must be bored

Prevents counterfeiting

VLSI types put art on chips so that when that chip is ripped off, the
artwork can be found on the counterfeit -- thieves just copy the
whole thing, including the unnoticed artwork.

[AECRADIO]

Microchip artwork.....

While I can accept thsi form of artwork can, at times, prevent theft of intellectual property, but I believe the reason underscores this.

I think this is a way to 'prove' to other chip fabs that the designer/s can produce ever shrinking desings on the silicon substrate and the 'silicon petroglyphs' are a medium for this form of 'information exchange'.

Since I'll bet 99% of the chip makers buy competitor's chips and dissect them to see how 'they' do their designs, it's been going on since the industry began in 1959 with Robert Noyce's first 4000 CPU.

NEC was sued for copyright violations when they were caught with direct copies of the 8088 CPU, which the V30 series processor was based upon, and was actually a direct copy with minor changes.

Intel made a big scene about this, and rightly so.

If NEC was too lazy or stupid to fab their own CPU designs, they should have been smarter when they decided to steal the core design and attempt to make it their own...BAD move on NEC's part.

Counterfeiting and outright theft is the reason chip makers buy and study the desiggns of their competition, it's a legal way of keeping everybody on the same sheet of music and to keep the playing field level as well.

That's just my take on the subject.

[sunsensors]

It's 20th century cave art

We humans are still the best animal.

Yea

yea, i never thought of that.....

[dsherr1]

The New Source for Mystical Icon Quest?

Will we find the mystical healing chip with an appropriate Icon on it?