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Antenna Diodes in the Pentium Processor
I was studying the silicon die of the Pentium processor and noticed some puzzling structures where signal lines were connected to the silico...
Two examples are in the photo below, where the metal wiring (orange) connects to small square regions of doped silicon (gray), isolated from the rest of the circuitry. The small black dots are the tungsten vias that connect metal layers, while the larger dark circles are contacts with the underlying silicon or polysilicon. Inconveniently, wet etching tended to eat away metal underneath the edges of the mask, which became a problem as integrated circuits became denser and the wires needed to be thinner.
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