How to design your own microchip!!! - Omar Rizwan at !!Con 2024

How to design your own microchip!!! Have you ever looked at your phone or laptop and wondered how it’s made? The answer is that almost all of the ‘technology’ in it – CPU, GPU, screen, camera, power electronics, motion sensor, radio – is microchips that are either drawn in CAD software or coded up (in a language like Verilog), then manufactured in chip fabs. A few years ago, I took a class where I designed my own chip and got it fabricated (the resulting chips are sitting on my desk here). I’ll talk about that process, how you write code to produce a chip, and how that chip actually looks up close, including how it physically looks in my hand, the 2D planar view, and a 3D view that we can fly around! Omar works on new ways to program and interact with computers. He made TabFS, a browser extension that turns your browser tabs into virtual files; Screenotate, an augmented screenshot app; and he’s worked on physical computing systems at Dynamicland and Folk Computer. Presented at !!Con 2024 (pronounced, of course, "bangbangcon"!) in Santa Cruz, CA -- https://bangbangcon.com/ !!Con is a production of the Exclamation Foundation -- https://exclamation.foundation/ Video Production by Confreaks Follow Confreaks 👇 https://confreaks.com https://x.com/confreaks