Searching for a contemporary large chip or multi-chip system to install and secure
Searching for a contemporary large chip or multi-chip system to install and secure
Hello, I'm putting together an exhibit about innovation history in Silicon Valley for moah.org. Many people are familiar with the vacuum tube inventor moving to Palo Alto to start a business, but fewer know about Shockley's shift to produce transistors there. Noyce is often credited with the monolithic integrated circuit developed in Palo Alto, and everyone recognizes Intel and the 8080A. I'm searching for a large modern chip—ideally with a billion transistors—that I can display by cutting off its lid. It will be mounted on a wooden board, so it won't need to function. I don’t have any leads on where to find such a chip. If you’ve handled a chip or know someone who has, please reach out and we can figure this out together. Being in the Bay Area would be a big plus. Thanks, Jerry.
For a large chip, consider a GPU die such as the top Pascal variant (GP100). It’s available in Tesla P100 or Quadro GP100 models. The die measures around 610 mm²—comparable to an RTX 3090—and contains roughly 15 billion transistors. You’ll need to sand the top portion of the die if you want visibility into its internal structure. The process might be challenging, but it’s definitely possible.
Early generation chips feature two separate dies. Core 2 Quad and Pentium D also support this design. You might find desktop versions with these dies or opt for laptop models that expose them. Another option is the 2016 Navi series from AMD, which combines HBM memory close to the GPU die. It wouldn't be costly to locate a single die off. If you're after a large unit, Xeon Phi processors are enormous, and E5 chips are similarly sizable, both affordable today.
Sure, you can find used XEON chips for around five dollars on eBay. They often come with large dies. A 2680 v2 might be available for seven dollars. A 2690 v1 would look similar in that state.