From Sand to Circuits
- The surprising process behind Intel® technology
The world’s most advanced manufacturing
Today silicon chips are everywhere. Intel creates industry-leading and world-first silicon products. These Intel chips are some of the most complex devices ever manufactured, requiring advanced manufacturing technology. Step into a modern "fab" where Intel makes its chips, and you’ll discover a range of sophisticated processes spanning close to a million square feet of space.
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Driving all forms of digital innovation
Intel chips power Ultrabook™ devices, smartphones, tablets, high performance computing, data centers and the internet. They automate factories, embedded in automobiles and everyday devices. The most sophisticated processor, can contain hundreds of millions or billions of transistors interconnected by fine wires made of copper. Each of these transistors acts as an on/off switch, controlling the flow of electricity through the chip to send, receive, and process information . Chips today may have multiple cores.
Explore silicon technology and manufacturing >
Silicon
Silicon, the principal ingredient in beach sand, is a natural semiconductor and the most abundant element on earth except for oxygen.
Wafers
To make wafers, silicon is purified, melted and cooled to form an ingot, which is then sliced into discs called wafers. Chips are built simultaneously in a grid formation on the wafer surface in a fabrication facility or “fab.”
Chips
A chip is a complex device that forms the brains of every computing device.
While chips look flat, they are three-dimensional structures and may include as many as 30 layers of complex circuitry.
Clean rooms
Chips are fabricated in batches of wafers in clean rooms that are thousands of times cleaner than hospital operating rooms.
Bunny suits
Fab technicians wear special suits, nicknamed bunny suits, designed to keep contaminants such as lint and hair off the wafers during chip manufacturing.
Design
The way a chip works is the result of how a chip’s transistors and gates are designed and the ultimate use of the chip. Design specifications that include chip size, number of transistors, testing, and production factors are used to create schematics—symbolic representations of the transistors and interconnections that control the flow of electricity though a chip.
Designers then make stencil-like patterns called masks of each layer. Designers use computer-aided design (CAD) workstations to perform comprehensive simulations and tests of the chip functions. To design, test, and fine-tune a chip and make it ready for fabrication takes hundreds of people.
Fabrication and Test
The "recipe" for making a chip varies depending on the chip’s proposed use. Making chips is a complex process requiring hundreds of precisely controlled steps that result in patterned layers of various materials built one on top of another.
A photolithographic "printing" process is used to form a chip’s multi-layered transistors and interconnects (electrical circuits) on a wafer. Hundreds of identical processors are created in batches on a single silicon wafer.
Once all the layers are completed a computer performs a process called wafer sort test. The testing ensures that the chips perform to design specifications
High-performance packaging
After fabrication, it's time for packaging. The wafer is cut into individual pieces called die. The die is packaged between a substrate and a heat spreader to form a completed processor. The package protects the die and delivers critical power and electrical connections when placed directly into a computer circuit board or mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet.
Intel makes chips that have many different applications and use a variety of packaging technologies. Intel packages undergo final testing for functionality, performance and power. Chips are electrically coded, visually inspected, packaged in protective shipping material for shipment to Intel customers and retail
At the Intel Museum: "From Sand to Circuits"
Learn more about the making of silicon chips at the Intel Museum’s permanent exhibit, "From Sand to Circuits," located in Intel’s Robert Noyce Building, Santa Clara, California.
Explore other online exhibits
If you can't make it to the Intel Museum, you can still enjoy a tour of Intel history with these online versions of the exhibits.
Moore's Law
Meet Intel's co-founder and see how his bold prediction set the pace for ongoing innovation.
The Intel® 4004 chip
Get the story behind Intel’s first microprocessor, and learn how it changed the course of technology and the world.
See how it made history >
Robert Noyce
Intel’s co-founder and the co-inventor of the integrated circuit, he made numerous contributions to the advancement of technology.
Learn more about this extraordinary leader >
Learn More About Intel History
Explore the events that made news and advanced the world of technology.
Intel Annual Reports and Anniversary Publications
Relive the Intel journey that started in 1968.
