I'm always fascinated by how brilliant us humans can be. So much so that we can put billions of transistors in very small spaces and in complex structures while also mass producing it.
I highly recommend watching this video about lithography and the machine that makes it all possible [1].
I have on my desk the book "State of the Art" by Stan Augarten. It shows the progression of transistors and integrated circuits from conception through 1983.
The book was one of the inspirations for me to become an electrical engineer. My older brother loaned me a copy of it when it was published in 1983.
Which one of the CPUs do you think looks the cleanest, aesthetically? The first Alpha looks rather chaotic, while the Samsung Alpha looks very uniform. That TI PA-7000 FPC looks like chaos. I think the two PowerPCs look the best, which is what I'd expect too. Well, actually I'd expect some of the other RISC to look simpler too...
I was also fixed on PowerPC after noticing how regular the dies were. Cache on the right, then what looks like bank after bank of fairly uniform control logic. It's almost like they decided on a general structure and fit everything into this, rather than letting things organically form as needed.
How can someone explain this to a kid? Is there somewhere an even more simplified version than Arduino or similar to show how all these things actually work? I know arduino is not a cpu, but overall, how these things work together, would be great to see/show.
I don't expect to show how electrons move :) I mean, some model, a toy or so, that shows how these things work. I remember it only from books/specs, but even there, at a certain point there are "limits" :)
Some of the later steps may be beyond them, depending on the child's age, but Charles Petzold's wonderful book Code explains how you could set up a processor from logic gates with only a little handwaving.
If they are a little older and interested, NAND 2 Tetris is a good self-paced course.
I‘m teaching a course on computer architecture at my university and there are these model processors called MUx (MU0-7) that explain how a CPU works from the ground up. I‘m not aware of any toys (my students keep asking me about that as well), but I wrote an interactive visualizer that illustrates the simplest processor and how data moves through it: https://pascalbormann.de/mu-vis/
Not mobile friendly unfortunately and maybe a bit too advanced for kids, but it could be a starting point. The code is here if you want to build on it: https://github.com/Mortano/mu0-visualization
True but to do anything interesting you do need a whole bunch of wires and components, even for an 8-bit CPU. Maybe it is a good start to instead combine gates to do some useful work. People are also building CPUs in Minecraft, that should get kids engaged :)
I love these. The https://www.youtube.com/@EvilmonkeyzDesignz channel does some wonderful explorations of chips with high powered microscopes, finding easter eggs and graphics left by designers. So much fun.
To capture the individual transistors on a modern CPU, you'd need an image tens of terabytes in size, and it'd have to be captured by an electron microscope, not an optical image. And even that wouldn't let you see all the layers. Some of the very old CPUs, I'm not sure what resolution would be required.
I highly recommend watching this video about lithography and the machine that makes it all possible [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2482h_TNwg
I have on my desk the book "State of the Art" by Stan Augarten. It shows the progression of transistors and integrated circuits from conception through 1983.
The book was one of the inspirations for me to become an electrical engineer. My older brother loaned me a copy of it when it was published in 1983.
I think it looks very well structured compared to the Soviet KM1801VM2
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Birdman86#/media/Fil...
I don't expect to show how electrons move :) I mean, some model, a toy or so, that shows how these things work. I remember it only from books/specs, but even there, at a certain point there are "limits" :)
http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/expert.html
Also this person has some simple tutorial on how a toy CPUs work. He even made a simulator so you can make your own using gate logic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZwneRb-zqA&list=PLFt_AvWsXl...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PanqoHa_B6c
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
If they are a little older and interested, NAND 2 Tetris is a good self-paced course.
https://gallery.ramonaoptics.com/gallery/viewer/42009871001#...
[1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/130561288@N04/albums/721576504...
https://www.righto.com/2020/06/reverse-engineering-and-compa...
https://www.righto.com/2019/02/op-amp-on-moon-reverse-engine...
https://www.righto.com/2018/06/silicon-die-analysis-op-amp-w...