As a retired test engineer working at National Semi, Motorola and other semi houses here's a couple tidbits about wafer probing. First, the probe card does not move, all motion is in the chuck that holds the wafer using vacuum. The chuck is positioned in X, Y and Z by linear motors in the most common Electroglas probers. The pcb is very thick because probing high pin count die requires an extremly rigid material to withstand the significant amounts of force needed to deflect the probes such that they all make contact. This Z axis distance is in the order of 1 to 3 thousandths of an inch. Second, the probe ring is mated to the pcb after it is assembled on precision fixturing to position the tip of each probe in the center of the die bond pad and perfectly aligned in Z axis. Once the probes are positioned the assembly is encapsulated in an epoxy ring, hence the name "epoxy ring probe card". The probes are tungsten which has the necessary mechanical and electrical properties required. Probe cards are periodically "aligned and planarized" after probing 25 to 100 wafers and to repair damage. This is done by highly skilled technicians under a microscope. Hopes this is helpful. Probing technology has come a long way since the 60's when I first used them.

@GOLEG11

7 жыл бұрын

that roswell Caused it all!!!

@AlfredoMazzinghi

6 жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing!!

@strongholds12

4 жыл бұрын

David Myhr get out of here dinosaur. You're out of date 🙄

@analogaudiorules1724

4 жыл бұрын

@@strongholds12 How about don't be an asshole. 😂

@ruthlessadmin

4 жыл бұрын

Did you ever get to work with encabulators?

Beautiful wafers....I remember when i was in Elementary and on "career" day this geeky guy brought a wafer to show us and try his best to explain what they are and why they were so important and how in the future they would get more complex....this was about 20 years ago and I just can't believe how beautiful they are and AMAZING...wish I could go back in time and admire the wafer. No one paid attention to that geek, everyone wanted to see the stupid cop or firefighter. LOL.

Just looking at some of these older vids. Here's a story I heard years ago about a chip fabrication factory. Once the circuit lines have been etched onto the chips, the chips pass through a kiln to harden the circuit lines on the silicon. The kilns were similar to those pizza ovens that have a conveyor belt in them, cold pizza goes in one side and hot pizza comes out the other side. There was a chip factory (I never heard exactly which one) where the defect rate of the chips would mysteriously skyrocket once in a while, then go back to normal, only to skyrocket again a few weeks later again. The engineers at the factory were tearing their hair out trying to find the cause of the defect surges. One Friday evening one of the engineers was working back late and as he was on his way out he went past the chip kiln area and found some of the night shift workers had been putting frozen pizzas through the chip kiln as a late night snack. Fat and other substances from the pizzas were then contaminating the sets of chips that went through the kiln after the pizzas had been cooked, causing the defect rate for the chips to suddenly rise. A bunch of people in the factory suddenly became unemployed.

@thelavian4481

7 жыл бұрын

LMAO!

@RetroArcadeGuy

7 жыл бұрын

You made me hungry.

@radiosonde.online8164

7 жыл бұрын

This story I do not hear for the first time. The first time was at the university of my professor. I believe it by now. Because so much what happened to me is bordering on madness.

@davidfrisken1617

7 жыл бұрын

It is an Urban Myth. You will probably hear the story again in your life, from yet another source, and so on.

@hardscorerockkssss

5 жыл бұрын

David Frisken not myth..i have also worked at chib fabrication chip and we had similar issues.like people not properly using clothing or take not needed stuff there

This is so interesting. I have no idea what I'm watching.

@gustavgnoettgen

3 жыл бұрын

Exactly, you're welcome 😄

Those wafers are insane, the level of detail and scale is ridiculous. Very interesting and demonstrated how little I know about processor architecture! Thanks for posting.

At around the 38:00 minute mark, those are not pinholes that he is seeing through the probe. Those are the reflections of his camera's LED lights. The LEDs are reflecting from the glassy surface of the probe material.

@BillAnt

4 жыл бұрын

That's exactly what I was thinking too, you can see the round illumination pattern reflecting off that glob of poxy acting like a lens. Maybe Dave got too exited and mistook it as pinholes. At these micron and sub-micron scales, one needs a good couple of hundred dollar quality optical microscope in order to see anything meaningful.

@fredericamelowee2348

3 жыл бұрын

that's a resistor

so cool. by bar, chip manufacturing is one of the most, if not THE most amazing production technologies we have developed. It's crazy to. Moores law is just sloing down now.

@normanslade4903

7 жыл бұрын

0kIlLtHeMuSiC 0

@Czeckie

3 жыл бұрын

speak for yourself! I haven't developed shit

The semi industry is divided into back-end and front-end operations. The back-end - cutting,testing etc - is usually done in the far east. The front-end is the actual fabrication process which involves lithography, etch, furnace, sputter and implant - virtually all use robotics to handle the wafers. The actual fabrication process can take up to 6 weeks and the wafer might have up to a dozen layers.

@steelthfighter

8 жыл бұрын

+Angus MacLellan so aside from the wafer, how much more goes into it? or is it mostly just the wafer then all the circuitry is already in the wafer, then attach the leads?

@AgnostosGnostos

8 жыл бұрын

Nice info. One of the best videos about processors technology I have ever seen.

@jamesdriscoll9405

5 жыл бұрын

@@steelthfighter the active circuitry is all at the surface of the wafer and is "paper thin".

I kept avoiding this video thinking that the video was going to be about chip reels. Much more interesting than expected. Keep up the good work. Thank you for sharing this with us.

the probe card had 144 wires on each side of the square just in case anyone was wondering PS i counted this at 3am so i may be a little off ^-^

Oh I want to get a full wafer so badly one day. They are absolutely stunning to see.

FYI, the tungsten used in those 100 nm probes is partly because of the extremely high hardness of tungsten but also because you can use electrochemistry to sharpen it to a few atoms at the tip with just a few volts and some saltwater.

just finds this EEVblog videos...pure gold dude.

That's really cool. Sort of stuff that should be on display in a museum.

Vincent Himpe thank you so much to be so gracious supplying these FAB parts. Marvelous : - ))

Thank you for showing it! And a big thanks to Vincent for making it possible :D

38:28 They're not pinholes. It's the reflection of the microscope LED.

@leocurious9919

8 жыл бұрын

Shreyas Rao Jeah. I was like... wtf is he talking :D

@BillAnt

4 жыл бұрын

That's exactly what I was thinking too, you can see the round illumination pattern reflecting off that glob of poxy acting like a lens. Maybe Dave got too exited and mistook it as pinholes. At these micron and sub-micron scales, one needs a good couple of hundred dollar quality optical microscope in order to see anything meaningful.

@micarifamily1

3 жыл бұрын

Was just about to say the same thing but saw you first....lol funny to see and hear that good catch!

@fredericamelowee2348

3 жыл бұрын

the pin is soldered on a resistor and the led reflect on the blak side of the resistor.

Damn that interesting, thank you Vincent all these years on.

Awesome video! Thanks for posting it and thanks for Vincent for the goodies.

Best mail bag by far Dave! Loved it. Big thanks to Vince as well!

Absolutely amazing stuff you hardly ever get to have a look at plus lots of information provided by you equals a great video !!!

That was most impressive and informative! Thank you Dave & Vincent!

I used to work in research and development for the amorphus SiO2 nanoparticle solution used to polish those wavers. I LOVED to visit our customers! :)

I used to work at the IBM 200mm fab in Burlington Vermont USA and we used to call the cleanroom suits, graph paper ninjas. Had to share. I also used to take home the old reticles for the photolithography Nikon tools. I wish I still had some because I would send one too you. Uber cool looking.

@napablue7502

8 жыл бұрын

+Marcus Taber Very cool! We were the first outside company to use the Burlington FAB when IBM opened up the facility as an ASIC vendor. I LOVE the Essex area. Very beautiful countryside, and I also love UVM. It was so amusing working with the design engineers there since before us, it was exclusively IBM personnel -- it was like the scene in "Independence Day" when the President et al go to Area 51 where the scientists "don't get out much." They loved the outside contact and asked us tons of questions about what it was like in the outside world. haha

You know you have watched too many EEVblog when you start getting tailored electronic adverts for scopes!

@steelthfighter

8 жыл бұрын

+MomentousGaming my best one is watching an EEVblog and getting a vacation ad to Australia

Just W.o.W nothing to say, much thanks to Dave and Vincent for sharing such a great stuff.

Thank you David ! Excellent video and very educational ! Oh yes, thanks to Vincent, too !

I was incredible looking forward to see wafers closely, thanks a lot!

This is one of the most interesting videos I've stumbled into for awhile, so awesome! Thank you for sharing!

Wow, cool stuff. Thanks Vincent and Dave!

Thanks for posting, I've worked in the industry for many years but never had an overview like this before.

@23:15 - Now that's a multilayer PCB! It would be great for you to X-Ray that board without the frame -- show the insanity within.....:-)

Excellent, an insight into a very small world,. Thanks Dave, and a huge thanks to Vincent, nice one!

Interesting looking at the inards of chips I used to work with. But more than that, it was your presentation and the Gangam Dance that was enjoyable.

Great example of some unbelievably microscopic work that goes on behind the scenes to provide us with modern semiconductor components. Thanks for sharing.

So awesome that someone sent this over to Dave! I tip my hat to you Vincent

Great Video, one of the best yet! Thanks Dave and Vincent.

Mad Props, Vincent!! That was a pretty good show. Well done, indeed.

Glorious geek pron! Amazing stuff, thanks for the video and to Vincent for sharing!

Vincent you are a bloody champion mate!

Absolute best mailbag episode so far!! And thank you for your in depht explanation of all the things inside this very interesting parcel. A very special and BIIIG thanx goes out to the sender: Vincent Himpe!! GREAT STUFF thank you so much for providing and Dave for sharing :)

did anyone else collect old computer parts when they were little. I had a closet full of computer parts cause I just thought they were fascinating. I grew out of it but now I feel like starting a new collection lol

@DarkRendition

10 жыл бұрын

YES! I did. I remember breaking open old 486 chips to remove what I thought was gold! I dismantled old HDDs and busted open non-functioning CRT's to explore their internals. I'm 27 now, and I must have been in late elementary/early middle school when I began to really explored the world the computer hardware. That was back in the when dual Voodoo2's in SLI where the very best you get! I even remember the day Nvidia bought 3Dfx... sad day to see the Voodoo line disappear. I'd love to see Nvidia name a GK104, GK110, or even Maxwell part in honor of the Voodoo series! That would set my nostalgia on fire!

@deanintheg

10 жыл бұрын

DarkRendition Same here, always dissembling any electronics I could get my hands on when I was young

@Guyskiy

10 жыл бұрын

I actually used to work in a university research lab, and had an electron microscope and atomic force microscope under my watch. We once had a particularly annoying piece of electronics finally crap out on us, and IT didn't pick it up right away, so we tore it all up and examined it before returning it for recycling. Removing that protective epoxy packaging was challenging but eventually we got a piece of a memory module cracked open, and we got to "see" the individual transistors and interlaced arrays. Those images served as my PowerPoint backgrounds for years.

@killercavalry

9 жыл бұрын

i definitly did! i had tons of old crap that id mess around with

@aladarhorse

4 жыл бұрын

I have an old circular part kind of like that test board and believe it or not it's for a Pentium one I've had hanging up for ages it's fascinating to look at I've got some really old see-through hard drives to

Fraps is a good screen video capturing program. It can record audio from the microphone as well. It would have made it a bit easier to see those microscope shots.

That was really awesome. Thank you and Vincent

I was working in Test-Board-Design (mixed signals PCBs for frontend and backend) for 9 years (was like a 4 guy company). If i remember correctly, the most expensive boards i made for our costumers were about 12000€ in manufacturing. We charged about 30000€ for these (we added pcb assembly, the metal stiffener, rf-relays and sockets). They had 30 layers, needed to be about 6mm thick for mechanical stability because there are thousands of pogo pins pushing onto it from the tester side (agilent 93000). Almost every second layer was a shield layer with a specific depth distance to the signal layers, so the board was 30% copper. The signal wires had a specific width in order to facilitate 50-ohm impedance (were needed). The board was about 40x50cm and had 4mil features in the middle section. It wasn't a very hard job, you had to stick to a ruleset that was verified by 2 other guys when the design was finished, so i did not have to know anything about RF-TEchnology at the beginning.

"Hammer time!". LMAO Awesome mailbag. Thanks to Vincent / Dave for a great vid! I have "fond" memories of wearing the ol' Bunny Suit in some factories before (optical broadband stuff mainly). Gets damned hot in those when the room was already around 35 degrees C. That probe card looks insane - I hope the people who soldered it got paid a good wage. Looking forward to hearing what the chip designs are on those wafers. They look like some sort of MCU, as you can make out the ROM / RAM blocks.

excellent video. I use to work in the telecommunications business making multi layered boards. Some of the techniques I witnessed in the construction and development was mind blowing.

This guy is so happy. I'm slightly envious.

plz Dave, never change, you are awesome!

This has to be my favourite video of yours. It is amazing. Thanks

Haven't got a clue what your on about half of the time but your a legend and I love watching your videos as soon as they pop up. One of the best of my subscriptions! Go Dave!!!

That is absolutely amazing. What a treasure.

What a wonderful mailbag.

You're more amazed by the saw cutting those wafers than what is on the wafers and what they can do?!?

Nice one Dave. 40 mins of awesomeness

Thoroughly enjoyed this !

Very interesting stuff! thank you for sharing

Awesome video Dave... totally mind-blowing for someone like me who has never seen any of this stuff before.

I used to work for Tempress Microelectronics, a company that manufactures (or used to) bonding machines, diffusions ovens, etc. That was in the '70's. the technology has progressed a lot since then. Always interesting to watch though.

The probe card is fixed in place during setup, the test head is lowered onto it and fixed too. The wafer is loaded onto the prober chuck, it is the chuck which aligns the wafer and performs all the x, y and z movements to make contact with the probe tips. Most fabs haven't fired ink during testing for decades. The pass/fail results are instead stored as maps and used to either ink the wafer on dedicated machines later, or the die are assembled directly from the maps in an inkless process.

Best mail bag by far love looking at silicon wafers ;-)

its videos like this that are priceless to teach the next generation, words alone cannot express how much i am in awe of the process that goes on in making electronics now lol

Most of the fabs have a least one SEM to check the probes. There are photo etch blocks & chemicals that are applied washed off and reapplied to the wafers. Sumitomo has been making wafers in North Phoenix for about 14 years now.

absolutely amazing--thanks for the input!

I really love this video upload. Cheers for your enthiousm (spelling ..) and your sharp zooming. Awesome channel! Greetz from Netherlands.

Never seen such thing. Awesome, thanks!

Man, this absolutely boggles the mind! If it's hard to imagine manufacturing anything here, imagine inventing them and then imagine finding a way to make them! Awesome!

Beautiful just simply beautiful

I love Dave's fantastic videography :) Also thumbs up to Vincent :)

26:48 I love how this fancy thing appears to be held together with sheetrock screws.

This is astoundingly mind-blowing stuff! It's just incredible.. 😳

If you lived through the ’70s or ’80s, you probably remember a time when technology was big. TVs, with their cathode ray tubes, were monstrous. Amplifiers and hi-fis were heavy, bulky, expensive things. And computers… computers were really large. Case in point: The IBM hard drive pictured above, which weighs in at 38.5kg (85lbs) and stores a grand total of between 1 and 2 gigabytes. This drive, which originates from around 1989, would’ve been teamed up with a number of other drives and slotted into a IBM 3390 Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) - a floor-to-ceiling server rack. One IBM 3390 model was capable of storing up to six drives, for a total capacity of 22.7GB. A complete IBM 3390 system had a data transfer rate of 4.2MB/sec, with an average seek time of 12.5 milliseconds. The platters probably span at around 2,500-3,000 RPM. While it’s hard to put an exact price on a single drive, it would’ve cost somewhere in the region of $50,000 to $100,000 in 1989 - or about twice that, in today’s money. That’s around $50,000 per gigabyte - or one million times more expensive than today’s hard disk drives, which are currently priced at around five cents per gig. By the time I had stated in computers in 1977 we were using the ICL 1904 with the removable disk packs!

Amazing i cranked the resolution wheel all the way up for this vid cheers dave

Wow. I could watch the mc hammer clean suit dance for another 60 seconds. That was great!

mchammer lmaothese shots make you really appreciate more the tech we have

Hammer time!

Incredible job!! I have lived from the hand-crank magneto phone to this. A good time to be in this business.

That is sickeningly awesome.

The wafers are circular for polishing. This is a nice channel. Hammer time

My first job after the service in 1972 was as a machinist apprentice at CHA Industries. Most noteworthy for the design and production of the Mark50 deposition system. Ah,...Silicon Valley days.

Dave this is one of the best videos. Big thumbs up.

To answer your question, spin coating is very common. We have a clean room at my college and when we went to coat the wafer in photoresist we used a spin coater.

I know the video is quite old, but that probe head would give a wonderful clock.

This is just a thing of beauty..... I love the rainbow sheen on that wafer

Pretty neat to see, Thanks for showing.

One can barely imagine complexity of tools used to build these chips

What! I used to live in Naples, FL and I've never heard of that company before... Learn something new everyday.

Hi Dave A few small corrections from a wafer sort person. If you look close on the probe card you noted that some some of the probes were shorted. Those pins are power pins Vcc or Gnd supply's . The next comment is that the probe card does not come down on the pins the wafer moves under the probe. the probe card you have is the xyz accuracy of such a probe card the height diffrence between the first and last pin needs to be >5 mil

Absolutely Fascinating video. Thanks Dave.

Dave... generally the chips are "glued" by forming a gold-chrome eutectic alloy between the chip and the lead frame. Chemical magic!

Absolutely great post! thanx!

Incredible and very informative! Thanks!

"Wow! That looks bad." LOL. Yeah.. it kind of does. Thanks for the great videos Dave. Thanks for sending in the cool stuff Vincent.

Very cool stuff! Thanks for the vid!

Jumping castle ! Love it !!

The 100nm tip one is less than the wavelength of visible light, so you probably can't see it under any magnification.

Amazing , explained stuff well . Thanks

MC Hammer - hahaha - awesome video, thx dave!

cool seeing your work surface in 10x when you poke it!

thank you i have been following for a year or so and Dave knows his shit and the microwatt is a cool tool thank you good work go Dave.