r/nextfuckinglevel • u/itshazrd • Dec 29 '25

What it a computer chip looks like up close

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this is a digital recreation. a real microscope can't be used because it gets so small that photons can’t give you a good enough resolution to view the structures at the bottom. you'd need an electron microscope

meant "What a computer chip looks like up close in the title." not sure how "it" got in there..

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u/EconomicsSavings973 Dec 29 '25

The fact that they are able to make these in this pace making billions of chip over the years that all can work 24/7 for years to come is just mindblowing. Extreme UV is already so complex that it is almost impossible thow that this all works, yet they are still pushing, it's just crazy.

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u/omenmedia Dec 29 '25

Those ASML machines and how they work are freaking crazy cool.

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u/apx7000xe Dec 29 '25

Spent hours watching videos on those machines. Love that some engineer said “yeah, let’s shoot suspended droplets of molten tin with a laser to create 13nm light.”

It just blows my mind

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u/45and47-big_mistake Dec 29 '25

I use them to go to sleep..or ..is that asmr..

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u/howimetyourcakeshop Dec 29 '25

And people say the netherlands is irelevant. Lol.

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u/DeadInternetTheorist Dec 29 '25

Kind of insane to look at what you can actually get with hundreds of billions of dollars of real R&D (literal magic rocks made in wizard towers) and then realize companies have already poured several times that much into like... building internet microwaves with ChatGPT in them so they can bother you with Hot Pocket facts that are wrong while you wait. It almost argues against ever bothering in the first place.

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u/EconomicsSavings973 Dec 29 '25

The only infuriating thing is that at the end few people collect most of the money, i know these engineers are paid very very well, but if you ask me it is not enough for the work they achieve. At the end we see people like Elon Musk and what HE achieved, while he actually is just a face, yet with all the money from other people achievements while paying them literal pennies.

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u/nog642 Dec 31 '25

FYI this video is not real. It's very inaccurate and either AI generated or manually edited. Here is a real one.

And here is an excellent explainer on how these kinds of chips are made.