Integrated Circuit with Chip Art
date: label: date made
content: ca 1994
name: label: maker
content: Analog Devices, Inc.
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: Integrated circuits consist of electric components such as transistors, resistors, capacitors, and metallic interconnects manufactured at a nanometer scale on a silicon chip. Chip designers are constantly seeking to pack more components into less space making the engineering requirements of chip design almost an art. In the 1970s and early 1980s design engineers began to personalize their chip designs by leaving microscopic images etched inside the chips’ functioning design. These images took a variety of forms; company logos, funny animals, comic characters, or inside jokes between the engineering team. This hidden art helped to show that chip layers were correctly aligned and could prove that a competitor had stolen a chip design. Once chip designs were covered by copyright in 1984, chip art became a way for engineers to assert their individuality into the mass production of chip manufacturing.
label: Description (Brief)
content: This 21msp50/55/56 digital signal processor chip was created by Analog Devices Incorporated around 1994. The chip contains an image of a fire-breathing Godzilla.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Electricity
label: See more items in
content: Computers & Business Machines
label: See more items in
content: American Stories exhibit
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: from Integrated Circuit Engineering Corporation, thru Glen R. Madland
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1996.3017.32
label: nonaccession number
content: 1996.3017
label: catalog number
content: 1996.3017.32
objectType: label: Object Name
content: integrated circuit
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: silicon (substrate material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: .025 cm x 3.1 cm x 1 cm; in x 1 7/32 in x 13/32 in