Godzilla, King of the Monsters

Godzilla, King of the Monsters

Godzilla, a mythical creature first appearing in Japanese movies in 1954, was found lurking on a small pad within the circuitry of the Silicon Graphics MIPS R10000 microprocessor. Atomic testing shortly after World War II supposedly created this dinosaur-like creature. In his first movie, Godzilla terrorized Tokyo, but he eventually became the good-guy (if you can believe that) and in 1998, the King reappeared in a blockbuster motion picture released by TriStar. The wireframe rendition of Godzilla on this chip is about 40 microns in size, meaning it would take about a billion of these tiny silicon creatures to equal the size of the "real" Godzilla.

Several people have emailed us with the suggestion that this rendition of Godzilla strongly resembles the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. We agree, however the designer (Kevin Kuhn) says he intended it to be Godzilla---but it can really be anything you want it to be.

View this silicon artwork under brightfield and darkfield illumination.


© 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: Wednesday, Mar 03, 2004 at 04:30 PM
Access Count Since October 3, 1998: 255102