Chip art, also known as silicon art, chip graffiti or silicon doodling, refers to microscopic artwork built into

integrated circuits An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

, also called chips or ICs. Since ICs are printed by

photolithography In integrated circuit manufacturing, photolithography or optical lithography is a general term used for techniques that use light to produce minutely patterned thin films of suitable materials over a substrate, such as a silicon wafer, to protec ...

, not constructed a component at a time, there is no additional cost to include features in otherwise unused space on the chip. Designers have used this freedom to put all sorts of artwork on the chips themselves, from designers' simple initials to rather complex drawings. Given the small size of chips, these figures cannot be seen without a microscope. Chip graffiti is sometimes called the hardware version of software easter eggs. Prior to 1984, these doodles also served a practical purpose. If a competitor produced a similar chip, and examination showed it contained the same doodles, then this was strong evidence that the design was copied (a

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

violation) and not independently derived. A 1984 revision of the US copyright law (the

Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 The Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984 (or SCPA) is an act of the US Congress that makes the layouts of integrated circuits legally protected upon registration, and hence illegal to copy without permission. It is an integrated circuit ...

) made all chip masks automatically copyrighted, with exclusive rights to the creator, and similar rules apply in most other countries that manufacture ICs. Since an exact copy is now automatically a copyright violation, the doodles serve no useful purpose.

Creating chip art

Integrated Circuits are constructed from multiple layers of material, typically

silicon Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ta ...

, silicon dioxide (

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) o ...

), and

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...

. The composition and thickness of these layers give them their distinctive color and appearance. These elements created an irresistible palette for IC design and layout engineers. The creative process involved in the design of these chips, a strong sense of pride in their work, and an artistic temperament combined compels people to want to mark their work as their own. It is very common to find initials, or groups of initials on chips. This is the design engineer's way of "signing" his or her work. Often this creative artist's instinct extends to the inclusion of small pictures or icons. These may be images of significance to the designers, comments related to the chip's function, inside jokes, or even

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or ...

references. Because of the difficulty in verifying their existence, chip art has also been the subject of online hoaxes (e.g. the never-seen " bill sux" comment on a Pentium chip—the reputed "photo" showing the inscription is a hoax). The mass production of these works of art as parasites on the body of a commercial IC goes unnoticed by most observers and is discouraged by semiconductor corporations, primarily from the fear that the presence of the artwork (which is clearly unneeded) will interfere with some necessary function in the chip or design flow.The Secret Art of Chip Graffiti
''

IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. The magazine contains peer-reviewe ...

'' article on chip artwork, by H. Goldstein, Volume: 39, Issue: 3, Mar 2002, pp. 50-55. Some laboratories have started collaborating with artists or directly producing books and exhibits with the micrographs of these chips. Such is the case of

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher l ...

chemist George Whitesides, who collaborated with pioneer photographer Felice Frankel to publish ''On the Surface of Things'', a highly praised photography book on experiments from (mostly) the Whitesides lab. Also, the laboratory of Albert Folch (who, perhaps not coincidentally, works in BioMEMS, the same field as George Whitesides) at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle ...

's Bioengineering Dept. has a highly popular online gallery with more than 1,700 free BioMEMS-related chip art micrographs and has already produced three art exhibits in the Seattle area, with online sales.Folch Lab ART Webpage
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Notes

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References

The Silicon Zoo
- A portion of the Molecular Expressions web site from Florida State University, containing pictures of hundreds of discovered chip artworks. The buffalo shown here is from this website.

External links

Yahoo directory
of chip art pages and articles.
Chipworks
An entire silicon art gallery found on the chips analysed by Chipworks.

* ttps://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06EED81E3CF937A35750C0A96F958260 Art on the Head of a Microchip

Bruce Headlam Bruce Headlam is a Canadian journalist and the media desk editor of ''The New York Times'' since September 2008. He has reported in the several sections of the newspaper since 1998, including Circuits, Escapes and the '' Times Magazine''. Previou ...

, New York Times, 4 March 1999. Integrated circuits Visual arts genres Easter egg (media)