#integratedcircuit — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #integratedcircuit, aggregated by home.social.
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“The system, to a large extent, causes its own behavior”*…
The geocentric universe illustrated, with the sun and planets revolving around the Earth. Interestingly, the illustration above was created in 1660, a few decades after Galileo popularized the fact that geocentrism was completely inaccurate. (source)Alan Jacobs quotes from Freeman Dyson‘s epic 1998 book, Imagined Worlds…
It often happens that a scientific revolution is accompanied by a change in style. I like to use the names of Napoleon and Tolstoy to symbolize two contrasting styles: rigid organization and discipline represented by Napoleon, creative chaos and freedom represented by Tolstoy. In the world of computers, Napoleon is the massive IBM main-frame; Tolstoy is the humble Macintosh. The computer revolution was an escape from the Napoleonic ambitions of von Neumann to the Tolstoyan anarchy of the Internet. Future revolutions will bring more such escapes.
Jacobs goes on to observe…
The big AI companies are the apotheosis — literally, in the view of many who work for them — of Napoleonic science. The open web and the world of hobbyist and small-scale devices (often built on the Raspberry Pi) are our remaining refuges of Tolstoyan computing.
See also: “Twenty Five Years After Imagined Worlds, What World Are We Living In? – Our surprisingly Napoleonic twenty-first century,” in which Erik Larson unpacks Dyson’s thinking and reconciles it to the world of 2022 (when Larson wrote the piece).
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As we contemplate culture, we might spare a thought for Jack Kilby; he died on this date in 2005. An electrical engineer, he made a– if not the— foundational advance that moved us into the age we’re now navigating: the integrated curcuit (or as we know it, the chip).
In mid-1958, as a newly employed engineer at Texas Instruments, Kilby didn’t yet have the right to a summer vacation. So he spent the summer working on the problem in circuit design known as the “tyranny of numbers” (how to add more and more components, all soldered to all of the others, to improve performance). He finally came to the conclusion that manufacturing the circuit components en masse in a single piece of semiconductor material could provide a solution. On September 12, he presented his findings to the management: a piece of germanium with an oscilloscope attached. Kilby pressed a switch, and the oscilloscope showed a continuous sine wave– proving that his integrated circuit worked and thus that he had solved the problem.
Kilby is generally credited as co-inventor of the integrated circuit, along with Robert Noyce (who independently made a similar circuit a few months later). Kilby has been honored in many ways for his breakthrough, probably most augustly with the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Kilby’s first integrated circuit
#AlanJacobs #chip #culture #ErikJLarson #FreemanDyson #history #integratedCircuit #Napoleon #Science #Technology #Tolstoy -
Once you start looking for it, you'll be surprised at just how many "features we're bragging about" on electronic component datasheets for ICs boil down to "we put a capacitor across this input".
#IC #IntegratedCircuit #ICs #datasheet #electronics #components #marketing
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A Navajo weaving of an integrated circuit: the 555 timer
https://www.righto.com/2025/09/marilou-schultz-navajo-555-weaving.html
#HackerNews #NavajoWeaving #IntegratedCircuit #555Timer #TechArt #CulturalHeritage
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When Repairs Go Inside Integrated Circuits - What can you do if your circuit repair diagnosis indicates an open circuit within ... - https://hackaday.com/2025/05/20/when-repairs-go-inside-integrated-circuits/ #integratedcircuit #repairhacks #icrepair
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#Asianometry: Japan’s Legendary Semiconductor Breakthrough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOKBUI3p_cs
#electronics #VLSI #IntegratedCircuit #SemiConductors #RetroComputing
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Sometimes I, as I suppose anyone, have a delayed laughter response. This was a magnificent 10 seconds…
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Bitmain Dispatches Initial KS3 Antminers Amid Surge in Kaspa’s Hashrate - According to Bitmain, the well known crypto ASIC mining rig manufacturer, the comp... - https://news.bitcoin.com/bitmain-dispatches-initial-ks3-antminers-amid-surge-in-kaspas-hashrate/ #graphicsprocessingunits #application-specific #consensusalgorithm #integratedcircuit #blockgeneration #bitmainminers #core-dominant #kaspahashrate #impressively #kheavyhash #profitable #heavyhash #kaspapool #antminer #filminer #kaspa
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Opening Up ASIC Design - The odds are that if you’ve heard about application-specific integrated circuits (... - https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/opening-up-asic-design/ #integratedcircuit #softwarehacks #circuit #openram #design #memory #asic #sram #tool #ram #ic
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Copy and Paste Lithium Battery Protection - Lithium batteries have, nearly single-handedly, ushered in the era of the electric... - https://hackaday.com/2023/02/02/copy-and-paste-lithium-battery-protection/ #integratedcircuit #batteryhacks #lithiumion #protection #charger #lithium #tp4056 #parts #dw01a #pcb
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Laser rust removal is mesmerizing to watch, but this IC "cleaning" is on another level.
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Comparing Solar Energy Harvesters - There doesn’t have to be much more to setting up a simple solar panel installation... - https://hackaday.com/2022/10/27/comparing-solar-energy-harvesters/ #integratedcircuit #energyharvester #weatherstation #solarhacks #battery #energy #small #solar #cell
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Integrated Circuit Manufacturing At Bell Labs In 1983 - With the never ending march of technological progress, arguably the most complex t... - https://hackaday.com/2022/08/23/integrated-circuit-manufacturing-at-bell-labs-in-1983/ #integratedcircuit #fabrication #belllabs #history #vintage #wafer
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Old Printer Becomes Direct Laser Lithography Machine - What does it take to make your own integrated circuits at home? It’s a question th... - https://hackaday.com/2022/03/22/old-printer-becomes-direct-laser-lithography-machine/ #integratedcircuit #galvanometer #lithography #laserhacks #etching #optical #silicon #galvo #laser #mems
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Factory Defect IC Revived With Sandpaper And Microsoldering - We might be amidst a chip shortage, but if you enjoy reverse-engineering, there’s ... - https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/factory-defect-ic-revived-with-sandpaper-and-microsoldering/ #integratedcircuit #repairhacks #leadframe #bodge #die #ic
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The Zeloof Z2 Intergrated Circuit Has 100 Transistors - Back in 2018 we reported on the first silicon integrated circuit to be produced in... - https://hackaday.com/2021/08/14/the-zeloof-z2-intergrated-circuit-has-100-transistors/ #integratedcircuit #chipfabrication #chipprinter #samzeloof #hardware
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Decap ICs Without The Peril - There can be few of us who haven’t gazed with fascination upon the work of IC decappers, whether t... more: https://hackaday.com/2019/05/19/decap-ics-without-the-peril/ #integratedcircuit #chemistryhacks #chipdecapping #chipdecap #parts #chip
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A Steady Hand Makes This Chip Work Again - What do you do when you’re working with some vintage ICs and one of the tiny legs pops off? That’s... more: https://hackaday.com/2019/03/21/a-steady-hand-makes-this-chip-work-again/ #integratedcircuit #supernintendo #repairhacks #leadframe #snes #nes #ic
