August 20th, 2020 ~ by admin

HP NanoProcessor Mask Set

Since we have a complete, and very early mask set of the HP NanoProcessor (donated by Mr Bower, thank you) it seemed fitting to scan them in (tricky at 600 dpi and 6 scans each (they are around 40x60cm) then I sent them over (500MB) my friend Antoine Bercovici in France to stitch and clean, as well as remove the background.  THat allowed this cool animation of the mask being built.
These are made from a set of 100X Mylar masks

Here you can see how the 6 different mask layers are built up.  The last mask layer (black) is the bonding pads
Each individual layer is also shown, some are very simple, while others contain a lot more.

In the lower left corner of the masks you can see their layer number 1B 2A 3A…etc

You can see the original HP part number on the mask 9-4332A as well as ‘GLB’  GLB is a composition of the initials of the two designers of the chip: George Latham and Larry Bower.

Here is a larger version as well: HP NanoProcessor Mask Set

 

 

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CPU of the Day

3 Responses to HP NanoProcessor Mask Set

  1. Stephen Beets

    Nice, but why are the images here so small? And why is there no way to download the files or the animation? Surely you could have made them a good bit bigger than 500×422 px. The details on some of them are next to impossible to see and zooming in on a 500×422 picture just looks like pixellated crap. 🙁

  2. admin

    I don’t have a way to download the animation (its generated by a plugin) But I do have a larger version of the masks, just hadn’t figure out the best way to implement it

  3. admin

    Here is a full width version
    http://www.cpushack.com/hp-nanoprocessor-mask-set-large-version/

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