yeah, all the regular topdown views don't really show you the "3D-ness" of the silicon ^^

Here we go! These ones couldn't photographed on an extreme angle in their packages, because those packages needed to be dissolved with acid to reveal the silicon. First up is a Pentium II Klamath:

The process of revealing the die likely caused some damage to the silicon, which you can see on close inspection. In fact, why not dive into the details? Here's a link to the absolutely ridicilously high resolution image (over 100 megapixels): https://donkom.ca/cpus/pentium-II-klamath-full.jpg

The closer you look, the more dust and debris you'll see. This image was taken after a lengthy soak in an ultrasonic jewelry cleaning machine - when it arrived to me it wasn't even remotely in photographic shape. The same was true for this beauty, a Pentium 4 Willamette:

By the same token, if you'd like to explore the birthplace of the NetBurst architecture in the most extreme detail you've ever seen, you can do so with the full-res image here: https://donkom.ca/cpus/p4-willamette-full.jpg

It would be fun to have unpackaged silicon dies of some of these chips to avoid the damage caused by separating them from their retail housings. Such wafers exist on eBay for other chips, but I haven't come across any from these two processors. Still, they're very pretty to look at and explore.

Impressive!

Now I just need a wall where I can use these pictures as a wallpaper 😀

They could probably be printed floor to ceiling at those resolutions. 😀

ooooooh ahhhhh mmmhhhh

Finally tracked down a 150mhz early S-Spec Pentium Pro without the coating on top of the silicon that blocked the optical interference colours. Voila!

Can I only find the images on your site with direct links?

Gorgeous. As a professional studio owner myself (commercial lifestyle, nothing to do with macro or product of this level) I’m impressed!

For anyone wondering, this is very, very niche stuff - both on an operational and technical level - just because you take photos for a living doth not mean you can do something like what has been done here. I wouldn’t be able to touch any of this!

Couldn’t save it.

Winchip 225