Chip basics: chips from zero
This section is for readers who have never touched a semiconductor: what one is, how a chip differs from a wafer, and what the more than ten billion switches on a phone chip are doing. Read it in order; the other sections build on it.
What is a semiconductor, and why is it called "semi"?
A semiconductor conducts better than an insulator but worse than a metal, and its conduction can be controlled. Silicon, doping, n-type and p-type, explained.
What is a chip, and how is it different from a wafer, an IC or a semiconductor?
A chip is a whole circuit of tiny switches and wires on a small piece of silicon, also called an integrated circuit (IC). How it differs from a wafer and a die.
What is a transistor, and why does a phone chip hold billions of them?
A transistor is a tiny switch run by electricity: on is 1, off is 0. How it works, why it keeps shrinking, why tiny ones leak, and how its shape changed.
Why are wafers round?
Chips are square but wafers are round: silicon is pulled from the melt while rotating, so it grows as a cylinder. Slices of a cylinder are circles.
- What is fab24hr?: the two ways to play, the four shifts, common questions, sources
- The life of a chip: how chips are made: tape-out, pilot run, mass production, wafer test, packaging, shipping
- A day in the life of a fab engineer: who does what (PE, EE, PIE, manufacturing), and the day hour by hour
- Who works in a chip fab: technicians, Manufacturing, process, equipment, Facilities, integration, QA, production control, masks, R&D, the chief, the vendor, and test and assembly at the test-and-assembly house: each role's day
- Chip fab jargon in plain English: MO, Hold, Q-time, OCAP and the rest, one plain sentence each
- fab24hr in the classroom: 20- and 40-minute lesson plans, one chapter of the main story per lesson, discussion questions, devices and privacy
- About and press kit: trailer, gameplay clips, descriptions and key facts