- The revolutionary Intel 8086 microprocessor was introduced 42 years ago this month so I’ve been studying its die.1 I came across two 8086 dies with different sizes, which reveal details of how a die shrink works. The concept of a die shrink is that as technology improved, a manufacturer could shrink the silicon die, reducing costs and improving performance. But there’s more to it than simply scaling down the whole die. Although the internal circuitry can be directly scaled down,2 external-facing features can’t shrink as easily. For instance, the bonding pads need a minimum size so wires can be attached, and the power-distribution traces must be large enough for the current. The result is that Intel scaled the interior of the 8086 without change, but the circuitry and pads around the edge of the chip were redesigned.
- Hunts Point, Washington (Wikipedia)
Hunts Point is a town in the Eastside, a region of King County, Washington, United States, and part of the Seattle metropolitan area. The town is on a small peninsula surrounded by Lake Washington, and is near the suburbs of Medina (to the southwest), Clyde Hill (to the south), Yarrow Point (on another peninsula to the east), and Kirkland (to the northeast), as well as the city of Bellevue (to the east). As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 394.