Groovy People - Silicon Wafer, FRAM, Ramtron, Disco, Keep on Truckin'

Description: Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE About the Artwork: You are looking at microscopic circuits on a computer chip. Looking at these circuits is much like looking at clouds. Different people see different things. I named this artwork Groovy People because I saw four people walking towards me in the art style of the 1970's Keep on Truckin'. If you look closer, you might see that they all have dreadlocks, or you might see three ducks, in between the people, looking at you with binoculars :) The square piece of silicon wafer on the front of this artwork comes from a six-inch Ferroelectric Random Access Memory (FRAM) silicon wafer (I included a picture of the wafer above for reference) made by Ramtron in the 1990s. The complete wafer had about 2,756 chips on it. This wafer piece has about 60 chips on it. Each tiny rectangle on this wafer piece is a memory chip. The last picture above is one of these chips. The red rectangle on the chip is the area where the main artwork came from. This area of the chip is decoder logic used to access bits in the memory grids. FRAM was created as an alternative to the EEPROM/Flash nonvolatile chips. It appeared to be superior in almost every way. However, FRAM could not keep up with the density of EEPROM, and FRAM dropped from the technology landscape in the 2010s.Framing: The artwork is framed in an 8"x10" black shadow box frame, with glass. All framing materials are acid free. A narrative about the artwork that includes the artist’s signature is placed on the back of the artwork.Want to see more ChipScapes? Click here to see more ChipScapesTM in my store on eBayAbout Making Computer Chips:Computer chips start out as ordinary sand, which is silicon dioxide. However, the silicon must be made very, very pure. The first step is to melt the sand, in a furnace that reaches about 3200o F, and mix with carbon. This first purification process creates 99% pure Silicon, a common output is Silicon Carbide. The Silicon Carbide is processed in a trichlorosilane distillation method to create 99.9999% pure silicon called polycrystalline silicon. The polysilicon is broken up into chunks. These chunks are melted in a crucible at about 2500o F. A silicon crystal seed is dipped in molten silicon and slowly drawn out to create a cylinder of silicon. These silicon cylinders are some of the purest crystals on the planet. Once the silicon cylinder is grown to the desired diameter, it is sawed into wafers. These wafers are polished to achieve a very flat mirror surface. Transistors, and other micro-electronic parts, are built on the polished wafer in layers in a process called etching. The wafer is then sawed into its individual chips. Each chip is mounted in an electronic package that serves to protect it and connect it to the outside world. It has been said that computer chips are the greatest value added product in the world. We essentially take a pile of sand and change it into thousands of dollars worth of computer chips.General Information:These artworks are the creation of ChipScapesTM artist Steve Emery. ChipScapesTM are photographs taken of computer chips, boards, and other computer artifacts. They are sort of chip landscapes, or ChipScapesTM for short. Most often a macro-lens or microscope is used with special lightning to achieve these unique artworks. Intel, IBM, Fairchild, DEC, Signetics, Intersil, AMD, Zilog, Motorola, MOS, NEC, Texas Instruments, are some of the great chip making companies. Chips like the Intel 4004, MOS 6502, Zilog Z80, AMD 2901, IBM PowerPC and others have changed the way people work and play. ChipScapesTM are dedicated to preserving and sharing these computing and communication technologies that changed the world. ChipScapesTM artworks are fine collectible artworks. ChipScapesTM come is a variety of shapes sizes and colors. Clusters of my artwork make for stunning displays! A ChipScapeTM would make a great gift for the nerd, geek, engineer, programmer, IT executive, or just that technology savvy person in your life.More Questions?For more information about ChipScapesTM, please check out my ChipScapes.com website. For more information about chip collecting as a hobby, please check out my AntiqueTech.com website.

Price: 85 USD

Location: Winter Park, Florida

End Time: 2024-08-09T15:43:27.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD