Hello, and welcome to Tiny Transistors! On this website you'll find lots of info about ICs, those tiny little things that have so much changed our lives over the past fifty years. Because they are so tiny, you need a microscope to be able to really see what's inside them. I've put a lot of chips under my microscope, and I've put pictures of them on this website. I hope you'll come to appreciate the hard work that these chips are doing for you (like driving the computer you're using right now), and the often beautiful layout that their designers have come up with. Click on the items in the menu on the left, and enjoy your stay!

Robo

Update 10-08-'09: New microscope!

I finally got my hands on a new microscope! It's a beautiful Olympus model E, including a rare extension that allows the use of reflected light. Until now I've used a transmitted light microscope with a lot of dirty hacks to get it to work with reflected light, but the results were not really of the quality I'd have wanted. However, from now on that's changed, and the chips will look a lot more like their designers intended. Just take a look at this example from the BCM2035:

I'm very pleased with the new image quality, though there are two big downsides to this upgrade: first, I now notice that many chips are extremely dirty and should be thoroughly cleaned before being shown online. Secondly, I should really re-make all the articles on this website with the new image quality, which is going to be a lot of work  That will happen some day, but for now you can enjoy my latest addition. Just click on the image below!

Latest addition: A smart card based public transport ticket from Holland (27-08-'09)