This channel has another video where it shows how the clean room lab is created starting from a basic backyard shed, and that was truly astounding. The positive pressure to keep the number of particles low in someone’s backyard is almost mystical to me.
Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4&t=2070s
It's quite old but I think there is no modern version of it.
I've tried posting to HN a few times but it hasn't gained traction for some reason, but I find it absolutely mind blowing.
Given that the shed in this guy’s backyard is already approaching the entire national technological output of any country in the 1970s I think he may get there.
1999. We will have flying cars
2024. LLMs - there will be robots
2026. How to make your own RAM1. How is the value read? Is it reading the leak?
2. How is recharging done? I guess the leak itself (assuming my guess in 1. holds) could provide charge for some logic that checks "if has charge then recharge else nop".
I still don't really get transistors :P, but this was cool.
And you are right, that charge on the drain can then be used both to drive some logic and to activate the recharging of the capacitor that was just discharged.
By the way I am being handwavy about "charge" moving about, if you really want to learn the electronics it is more correct to call it a voltage relative to some ground that the charge always moves towards.
It turns out they intentionally drain a bit of the storage capacitor, and amplify that weak signal. Some of that amplified charge is then fed back to storage.
This guy is not exactly a regular person. He is a pretty unique case of a talented semiconductor engineer who has a home lab for side hassles. It is not a low effort thing. He runs the equipment 24/7, scrubs all the surfaces in the lab daily to keep it clean.
Still, with the lab and all of the equipment already at hand, it cost him several weeks of work to produce this demonstration of transistors and capacitors, which kind of work, but are still long ways from a "completely complete" 20 bit DRAM chip.
Unfortunately it is simply too much work for one person to maintain a viable semiconductor fabrication process, even when it is done semi-professionally.
Would be interesting to know where the biggest bottleneck shows up first: materials, lithography, or error rates?
Much more impressive are the modifications to the microscope, transforming it into an improvised lithography machine, and the home made plasma etching machine, cobbled together from surplus components.
Of course, the whole thing, starting from the clean room, is extremely impressive -- Intel started their business in a much simpler facility.
RAM at home:
Those AI companies and hardware manufacturers lost all right to further dictate and increase prices. Capitalism does not work as de-facto blackmail monopoly - or should not. If a state fails to protect the people, such as in the USA right now under the orange king, then the people need to insist on change. ALL steps against this tyranny from a few superrich needs to end.
Right now the legislation is going in the way how lobbyists want this, e. g. trying to make 3D printing illegal, but I think technology will obsolete such illegal laws eventually. Tyranny will eventually fail.
I get my DRAM needs at the RAM ranch.
18GB at a time