Illustrated below is a high magnification digital image recorded in differential interference contrast (DIC) reflected light microscopy of surface features on a MIPS R10000 microprocessor integrated circuit. The features present on busses, registers and memory caches were enhanced through utilization of oblique illumination with blue and red gels.

Examine a larger version of this digital image.

In early 1996, chip design corporation MIPS followed their quickly conceived R8000-R8010 microprocessor-coprocessor set with the highly regarded R10000 microprocessor. The 64-bit MIPS R10000 integrated circuit is a super-scalar, reduced instruction set computing-specified (RISC) chip with multiple floating-point units and all the extra features available on high-end microprocessors of the period. The earlier versions featured clock speeds between 180 MHz and 195 MHz, and were fabricated with 6.8 million transistors placed on a 298-square millimeter silicon die using advanced 0.35-micron process technology. By 1998, MIPS released two faster versions rated at clock speeds of 250 MHz and 275 MHz, respectively.

---

BACK TO MIPS INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

Questions or comments? Send us an email.

© 1995-2022 by Michael W. Davidson and The Florida State University. All Rights Reserved. No images, graphics, software, scripts, or applets may be reproduced or used in any manner without permission from the copyright holders. Use of this website means you agree to all of the Legal Terms and Conditions set forth by the owners.

This website is maintained by our
Graphics & Web Programming Team
in collaboration with Optical Microscopy at the
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

Last modification: Friday, Nov 13, 2015 at 01:18 PM

Access Count Since August 31, 2002: 16537

Microscopes provided exclusively by: