The silicon inside Pi 5

Huge thanks to Kleindeik Nanotechnik and John McMaster for working with me on this project, to image the bare silicon die of the BCM2712 - the SoC that powers the Raspberry Pi 5.

I will also link to my long form video with even more shots and information about the Pi 5's SoC and it's little 'southbridge' chip, the RP1, designed by Raspberry Pi themselves!

#Shorts

[BirkinIdk]

This is mindblowing, but I think it’s almost crazier to see the chips that were being produced in the 70s. The fact that even back then humans could achieve such precision is mindboggling, let alone the stuff we’re able to achieve nowadays.

[maxvaneck]

That's because chips are powered by magic smoke. Once it escapes the magic is lost

[jasonbengel]

There is so much beauty in the design. It reminds me of electrical or plumbing in a home....you can tell how quickly it was whipped together by a contractor; only, in the chip design, a bad design could cost a lot more in terms of lives and money. Imagine if we had the power of Pi in the 1980's and where it will be in 2 decades.

[saultigh]

“How do they engineer all these stuff?” shows a shot of a crystal oscillator

[rajivbhuarya]

Woah it look like satalite view of a city

[iwillgettableflipped]

Ah, yes. The magic of proprietary technology.

[xxportalxx.]

Yeah it is pretty crazy how these are enginnered, especially if your new design uses different processes than your old designs, as you now have to individually dial in all of those processes. Deposition being a real bugger to dial in, changes in epitaxy can take 6 months or more to get working reliably enough for manufacturing! Then once dialed in you can run 24/7 for about a few hours to a few days before the machines run into issues (which they all do, all the time).

[jimduke]

The real question is “how did you know I’m watching this on a phone?”

Cool short vid

[FreedumbHS]

The field effect transistor is the most important invention of all time. Well over 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 are made every year

[der.Schtefan]

Intel can throw ions at individual transistors to switch them during debugging

[HyenaEmpyema]

What amazes me is how mechanically fragile these wafers are (if you actually touched them) but thermally they can get hot enough to burn you - yet run just fine.

[davidbuddy]

Jeff, I feel like you should know that the "nanometres" is just marketing and mostly meaningless. TSMC "N3" isn't actually 3 nm in size...

[breebw]

I have a friend, whose cousin has a friend who has actually seen a Raspberry Pi 5.
I hope to meet him one day.

[abhijeetghosh]

Absolutely, this is just like magic. 😇😇

[luigiprovencher]

Can a Ethernet to USB adapter be used to connect the pi to a laptop or PC and what happens if you do? I mean I know it's possible because I've got plenty of Ethernet to USB or USB to Ethernet adapter cables but I've never tried it before. Will I be able to access the pi through putty or anything other way?

[razialghul]

A piece of paper is actually 8.5 in x 11 in 😉

[deang]

How do they engineer stuff like this?
Answer: photolithography in manufacturing and hardware description lanaguages and synthesis tools in the design phase.
Plus a whole lot more.

[sysadmin-info]

It is not a magic thing. It is a nano technology.

[Evangelion]

Respect to those that made chips using analog tools. Truly magnificent, and such oustanding skills

[djmicrowave]

Due to quantum tunnelling it is impossible to make transistors smaller than 10 atoms across (roughly 2nm) if it is, the electrons can quantum tunnel through without a base voltage, making it randomly turn on and off when that small.