Silicon Wafer with Switch on a Chip (SoC) Chips - 8 inch,200mm, Broadcom

About this Artwork: Made in 2001, this communications wafer is 8 inches in diameter. It has about 100 computer chips on it. These chips are Broadcom BCM5600 SoCs (System on a Chip) switch chips. System-on-a-Chip is the highest level of single-core processor integration. Broadcom referred to these as an Ethernet Switch on a Chip. The chip had over 60 million transistors and 1MB of SDRAM. It contained a 32-bit 133Mhz microprocessor. The microprocessor managed 24+2 ports. This was the first integration of 24 10/100 and 2 100/1000 ports, Layer2-Layer7 switching on a single chip. In 2001, at a price of $100 a chip, this wafer had a value of about $20,000, depending on the good chip yield of the wafer.   About Making Computer Chips: Computer chips start as ordinary sand, which is silicon dioxide. The first step is to melt the sand in a furnace that reaches about 3200o F. The silicon is purified to create 99.9999% pure silicon. The silicon is broken up into chunks and melted in a crucible. A