Do scientists know how exactly the CPUs are working?

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rolingstone
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Do scientists know how exactly the CPUs are working?

Post by rolingstone » Fri Mar 25, 2011 11:39 am

Hello guys. I want to ask something .. I heard that even people invented the CPU is it true that even now the scientist do not know how exactly it is working?
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Nipuna
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Re: Is it true?

Post by Nipuna » Fri Mar 25, 2011 1:11 pm

I think it is a lie.

If they Don't know how CPU is working How are they Inventing New Types of CPUs ?

After All CPU wasn't Invented 2000 Years before. :) It was made in Recently. :)
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Re: Is it true?

Post by rolingstone » Fri Mar 25, 2011 1:30 pm

I thought of that. But I was told that the scientist just make them but do not know how exactly the very process and all the calculations how are made and performed . If you think, how all the processors and gadgets really work. If you think about a few people in the world knows how they are made, how are assembled and put to work. For example the military, air forces all electronic components. I couldn't find any video of how a LCD monitor or TV is made how the liquid crystals are put to work. Isn't that somehow strange.
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Re: Is it true?

Post by Nipuna » Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:16 pm

Even if there is no videos, Scientists know how they work.

What else they are learning in Campuses for Many Years as Students if they don't know how they work?

Let's see others Ideas too.
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Re: Is it true?

Post by rolingstone » Fri Mar 25, 2011 3:31 pm

I want to question everything, I want to see.
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Neo
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Re: Is it true?

Post by Neo » Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:08 pm

It is not true. Scientists know what they create. However in large designs with millions of transistors, humans can introduce little bugs that cause issue like calculation bugs, etc... One example is the Pentium FDIV bug.

All the blocks in a CPU including ALU are designed by scientists. As said before, when millions of transistors involved, humans can do errors where machines can't even detect.

If you want to learn about semiconductors which are the building blocks of CPUs, see article How Semiconductors Work.

If you want to know how chips are made, have a look at How Chips Are Made.
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SemiconductorCat
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Re: Do scientists know how exactly the CPUs are working?

Post by SemiconductorCat » Sun Feb 19, 2012 5:15 pm

Are you asking about the fabrication or just digital design ?

Since digital design should be reviewed by lots of developers [for a example US military reads whole the linux kernel
for trapdoors ] in the project team so it's probably obvious that it's not a military secret or something Rocket Science.


Chip frabrication is another topic ,it's heavily depends on the semiconductor physics which is behind lots of mambo
jumbo theories of theoretical physics. I have given learning that very early.

And yes there are lots of things that we don't explain theoretically in semiconductor physics .
One example is tunneling , and some theories behind this are quite confusing, but it's stable in technology wise and
we are being using it more than 100 years by now in EEPROMs.
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