Watch a Man Fabricate Functioning Micron-Scale RAM Cells in His Backyard Shed

Necessity is the mom of invention, and the RAM disaster is driving folks to some fairly inventive measures to keep away from paying by way of the nostril to improve their pc’s reminiscence. Recently, we coated one man’s courageous makes an attempt to run a pc with out RAM—spoiler, that concept is type of a non-starter—and now a YouTuber who calls himself Dr Semiconductor has upped the ante by constructing functioning reminiscence cells himself… in his backyard shed.

I truthfully thought the title of this video was a joke till I began watching, and it’s exhausting to overstate how wild that is. This isn’t a case of soldering collectively a number of logic gates—this man has managed to assemble a semiconductor fabrication setup within the type of shed that appears prefer it ought to be internet hosting a rusty lawnmower, a number of half-full cans of paint, and a wheelbarrow with a flat tire. In a video launched final month, the nice physician catalogued the development of his DIY cleanroom, and within the follow-up video, he narrates the method of placing collectively a functioning RAM cell.

If you’ve ever questioned how trendy chips are fabricated, the video doubles as a reasonably nice description of the method. The good physician explains every step as he goes, strolling us by way of the deposition of the preliminary oxide layer on the silicon wafer, then the processes of photolithography, etching, thin-film deposition, and testing. These processes use some fairly gnarly chemical substances to wash the chips and strip away unneeded materials. And in case you’re conversant in chip fabrication and end up questioning whether or not he makes use of hydrofluoric acid and piranha answer: Hell sure, he does. (There’s no signal of the delight that’s chlorine trifluoride, although, maybe as a result of getting maintain of it places you on all method of watch lists.)

The video additionally gives a wonderful clarification of how RAM cells truly work. One factor that you simply won’t know—I definitely didn’t till pretty lately—is that present drains continuously from RAM cells, which suggests they want fixed recharging. Dr Semiconductor’s cells want recharging each couple of milliseconds, however as he explains, even industrial DRAM must be recharged each 64 milliseconds or so. This is why RAM is unstable, and doesn’t retain knowledge if you flip your pc off. (As an apart: pc science YouTuber Laurie Wired lately made a wonderful video about why RAM works like this.)

Anyway, by the tip of the video, Dr Semiconductor has a number of absolutely functioning RAM cells, every of which is within the order of microns in measurement. And once more: that is insane. There are other channels on YouTube the place folks have efficiently put collectively residence photolithography setups, however truly producing functioning RAM with micron-scale cells is a complete different stage. Of course, it’s not just like the Doctor has magicked up a number of gigabytes of RAM—this video is principally a proof of idea, one thing its creator readily admits. However, it seems like he’s not completed—he ends the video by explaining his plans to “take these cells, stitch them together … and hook [them] up to a PC.”

If you’d requested me yesterday whether or not this was remotely doable, my reply would have been “lol no.” But now? I imply, I wouldn’t wager in opposition to him.