“With a collection of salvaged and homemade equipment, Zeloof produced a chip with 1,200 transistors.”
Sam Zeloof sliced the silicon, exposed the patterns with UV light and dunked the wafers in acid by hand. His second chip has 200 times the transistors of his first. Next he wants to match Intel’s 4004 from 1971, which had 2,300. Fifty years behind the industry is still decades ahead of what anyone thought one person could do in a garage.