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March 4, 1999
Art on the Head of a Microchip
By BRUCE HEADLAM
hen Michael Davidson first started photographing silicon chips through a microscope 10 years ago, he wanted "to promote circuitry as an art form," he said. Four years ago, his microscope excavated another kind of art from the microprocessor's metallic layers: a drawing of Where's Waldo. "At first, I thought it was an example of reverse engineering," said Davidson, a research scientist with the Natural Magnetic High Field Laboratory in Tallahassee.
In fact, he had come across a longstanding clandestine practice of chip designers: impressing a microscopic, non-functional cartoon or drawing into the surface of the chip. Since then, Davidson has photographed more than 60 chip designs. In December, he made his gallery of photomicrographs, including images of lizards, buffaloes and cartoon characters and one of the space shuttle, available through his laboratory's Web site (microscopy.fsu.edu).
SILICON DOODLING: Some chip designers mark their work with drawings. "We all did it," said Dan Zuras, a chip designer at Hewlett-Packard who has two designs on the site. "Eighteen or 20 years ago, they were all over the place."
Designs were usually etched into the upper metallic layers of the chip, creating the impression of an image in relief on the surface. The cartoons grew out of the ritual of having chip designers sign or initial chips they had worked on. For example, Zuras drew a Roadrunner on a then-fast Hewlett-Packard 1AK9 chip in 1982. "Back in those days, I knew where every one of the 153,000 transistors were on the chip," he said. "I knew it so well that I signed it, like writing your name in wet concrete after you've poured a driveway."
Other chips featured inside jokes or references. One of Davidson's favorites is the Con Artist, a drawing of a shady street peddler hawking contraband watches, chosen because, chip designers at Hewlett-Packard say, the company had modified the clock circuitry on the lower-cost microprocessor. Larry Johnson, a chip designer, once contributed a drawing of his chow chow, Nikki, to a MIPS Technologies chip, the R4000. "I've never seen a chip with more graffiti on it. There must have been 100 pieces, mostly names and initials." So why did he draw Nikki? "Well, I loved her."
Alas, some chip companies, like Intel, have banned chip graffiti because the designs can interfere with the checking process.
Kevin Kuhn, a mask layout designer at Silicon Graphics and well-known chip artist who drew the Where's Waldo image, said he hoped that the craft retained its underground quality -- within limits, of course. "I don't have an official mandate," he said. "But I wouldn't put in anything that would offend the people on my team or would be in poor taste, although I've been tempted." He added, "I don't have a grant from the N.E.A. or anything."
