Fossil Data Part 3: Antoine's Fossil CPU Chips Collection

[@DK640OBrianYT]

Rewatching this and even though the appreciation and admiration are impossible to spell out, I bet we all can recognize these feelings when seeing Antoine's great collection. Wasn't this the first time we as ordinary laymen all saw these megasized multichip server processors and sat there with an open mouth absolutely gobsmacked ? It was like discovering a whole new world in the professional realm, high above our 386's, 486's and Pentium's. Hope you are having a great time and a terrific summer, Marc. Take care man. My regards to all of these French paleo friends who initially made all this possible. Cheers from Denmark Scandinavia.

[@w00tDr]

This is a wonderful collection of IBM computer history. It must be emphasized that this collection is a result of Antoine's persistent hunt for the chips, the supporting hardware, and the knowledge of these systems. I had the opportunity to speak with Antoine, and he told me that many of the old IBM systems did not have publicly available documentation. Thus, he has set upon the task of documenting these chips in places like wikipedia so that we can all learn about them. I am really glad to be able to see this part of his collection on video. Looking forward to the next episode.

[@pdrg]

Antoine, one day your collection will be in a museum next door to the natural history one, fascinating collection!

[@dwindeyer]

It would be cool to know what sort of compute power each of these modules has as well. This is immensely cool, there are so many people covering consumer parts but these old server/hpc parts are out of this world. The large multi chip modules are like nothing I've seen before.

[@jackbloznowski5429]

I am glad to find people that appreciate the artistry of the electronic components and circuits. To me vintage electronics has a beauty beyond just the technical aspect.

[@movax20h]

Chiplet design makes a full history circle now :D

[@CuriousMarc]

It’s coming back for sure!

[@morgorth3242]

@@CuriousMarc came back on the cpu. now needs to show its face again on the gpu

[@y2kkmac]

@@morgorth3242 Lo and behold, we have it on the supercomputer GPUs now!

[@douro20]

The AMD K5 is an odd one; it was the first wholly indigenous x86-compatible design from AMD and was actually based on the 29k RISC architecture. It had an emulation layer in its microcode for executing x86 instructions.

[@ingusmant]

Not that old to remember if it was any good, I do recall the K6II being popular

[@CuriousMarc]

@@ingusmant Wikipedia, the source of all approximate pseudo-knowledge, tells me that follow on designs also used microcode x86 emulation... AMD processors became a lot more popular when they made them pin compatible, not just code compatible, with Intel.

[@160rpm]

@@ingusmant My second PC actually had a K6-II, I think it was like 233Mhz or so. I must have used that system until I got an AMD Athlon in 2000

[@adberco]

I think the FPU is straight from the AMD 29k indeed. Then AMD abandoned the K5 architecture after buying NexGen: the K6 is based off of the Nx586 (also translate x86 instruction).

[@mdrew44628]

Nice selection of modules. Most of that tech came out of the Hudson Valley of New York (East Fishkill and Poughkeepsie). I worked there in the late eighties to the early nineties when I transferred to the IBM plant in Vermont in 94.

[@MarcelHuguenin]

Wow, what an amazing collection Antoine has. Besides all of the technical wizardry of creating these chips it really makes amazing eye-candy. I also love how you did your time-line overview of the IBM chips evolution, by Antoine Darwin Bercovici, that was really funny. Thank you both for showing us this magnificent collection. Can't wait for the next one!

[@EpicTyphlosionTV]

8:29 Now THAT'S a multi-core processor

[@davedrezTV]

Antoine and Marc - Thank you for this great passion and presentation!!

[@osgeld]

cool guy, thank you Antoine for showing us parts of your collection, all the multichip carriers I want to frame and hang on my wall (though my wife would never allow it in the living room)

[@ICanDoThatToo2]

4:42 "advanced pentiumtologist" *snort*

[@robertnussberger2028]

It's like zooming down into the metropolis city in google maps. Amazing.

[@aserta]

And figure that in today's chips, the zoom gets even more ridiculous. Might as well call them micro-cosm at this point because on the width of your thumb, you can fit an entire "metropolis" worth of pathways.

[@sapperlott]

The white MCM shown at 11:20 is probably not from a Multiprise since those used much smaller modules. My guess would be G5 with less PUs (there were two versions of the G5 MCM - one for the smaller and one for the larger systems). Antoine could check against his other G5 module - the pin layout should be the same.

[@williammanganaro9070]

Amazing collection of multi chip modules. Brilliant! Thank you both for taking this time to show the world.

[@funkytransport]

really enjoyed this - thanks Marc and Antione!

[@38911bytefree]

Nice collection and crossovers with professions ... increidble !!!!.

[@Orbis92]

What a beautiful history of processors. Those giant ceramic tiles they used in around 92 are amazing :)

[@Mr.Leeroy]

if you realize the amount of design and thought effort that went into these, how concentrated this collective effort is in a couple boxes, they all look like gold bars then.

[@neodonkey]

Amazing series. Antoines collection is mindblowing.

[@alvaroacwellan9051]

Antoine's IBM tableau was extremely cool and useful, it's a nice surprise for me. I could even identify (with a little uncertainty but still) two (dual die) chips from my own collection.

[@AndyH2O]

This is absolutely brilliant, great video.

[@EinChris75]

This was a wonderful video. I have never expected to see anything like that.

[@BlackEpyon]

By all means, take your time. The content on your channel is incredible! We'd hate to see you rush anything.

[@LiveeviL6969]

Absolutely fascinating! Love the collection! "I forget this one" says with embarrassment - me: totally astounded of his knowledge already.

[@adberco]

It's from an IBM Enterprise System/9000 Type 9121 :)

[@soniclab-cnc]

Wow.... amazing collection. Stunning.

[@MartinEKoch]

Thanks to Antoine and Marc for sharing!

[@crb456]

6:26 shows a Golf Ball from an IBM typewriter at the feet of the dinosaur. I’m sure I have one of those somewhere! A great example of a better solution for a problem that had already been solved.

[@lwilton]

The AMD 29030 was the last or maybe next to last gasp of the AMD 29K RISC processor series. They were used extensively in the first laser printers made by most everyone, since they were the only things that could run fast enough to do the image processing necessary at 300 DPI or more. Interestingly, if you look at the AMD 29K architecture and the now fortunately extinct Intel Itanium architecture, you might come to some interesting conclusions about heritage, though the Itanium designers I talked to when the chip was new claimed they had never heard of the AMD 29K machines.

[@leyasep5919]

evolution convergence...

[@adberco]

It was an interesting time before ARM in the early 90s: what do you use for high performance embedded 32bit applications? 68k was popular, but AMD took the laser printer market with the 29k line indeed. The Am29000 was the original design, the Am29030 had cache, and the Am29050 was the top of the line with FPU, and embedded versions Am29200 and Am29205. Then came the Am29040 and the embedded Am2924x. Apple used them in the LaserWriter lineup after switching from 68k, and the 29050 was used extensively in avionics for the flight computer. They are also often found on FDDI adapters. An other option was the SPARC, which was used for laser printers and even early digital cameras.

[@neur303]

I admire your admiration! ☺️ Thanks for these beautiful videos!

[@JerrSpud]

wow Marc... you a really good story teller. Nice video as always.

[@utp216]

Does Antoine have his own channel? Those images of the chip dies are insane! Need to see more! :)

[@kaitlyn__L]

Oh shit, Antoine is the guy who made all those high res delidded pics I link people to all the time! That's awesome!

[@adberco]

You may be thinking of Pauli Rotakorpi, we have teamed up our efforts sharing chips: he has a wikimedia page.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@adberco perhaps, I definitely recognised the two precise AMD chip pictures shown in this video though

[@elijahvincent985]

Antoine is my spirit animal with his love of vintage electronics and ancient dinosaurs!

[@Dragonmastur24]

13:55 isn't one of those cores the same architecture that powered the Curiosity Rover for 20 years?(without radiation hardening of course)

[@adberco]

Yes, curiosity run on the Power architecture. the IBM RSC (risk single chip) was turned into a radiation hardened version called the RAD6000 by BAE. It evolved in the RAD750 which powers Curiosity, the RAD750 is a PowerPC 750, the same as the one you had in your G3 powermac.

[@Dragonmastur24]

@@adberco Thats so cool! Thank you for sharing your knowledge! !^.^!

[@douro20]

I believe the one at 13:56 is a POWER5 MCM from a POWER 595, the biggest POWER system IBM ever made (to my knowledge).

[@adberco]

Yes there's a 8 way Power5 MCM, indeed used in the 595 and others. It was a large scalable system.

[@khashayarrowshanak5126]

Oh, i am already soul bounded to him, i would give anything to see him in person... 👍👌

[@1944GPW]

Very interesting crossover from the museum to the chip collection, thanks for showing. I have an IBM 4331 (I believe) processor chip, a white ceramic module about 7cm square with an embossed diamond-pattern gold top and a few hundred pins underneath. I used to use it to comb my hair (seriously), it actually did a good job.

[@adberco]

These are nice, I don't even have one in my collection. They are becoming hard to find, hang on to it!

[@noelj62]

Interesting indeed. Thank you both for sharing.

[@Yrouel86]

So the poster you show toward the end with the IBM chip family, it would be really cool if Antoine could replicate that with an actual wall mounted exposition of his chip collection. Probably it would be a bit cumbersome to move compared to the individual chips/modules but I think it would be a fantastic sight

[@adberco]

My plan from the very beginning! although I still miss a few chips from the timeline, I'm not too far off having them all

[@Yrouel86]

@@adberco That is awesome. You have an amazing collection and you seem a really nice person overall. I hope you can find the missing pieces and assemble the full display piece. Do you also collect complete wafers? I have a small collection of mainly 6" wafers which are really cool to look at with a macro lense (don't have the appropriate microscope yet)

[@adberco]

@@Yrouel86 I probably have around 300 wafers, the Am29030 in the video is actually a wafer. Let's try to identify what you have :)

[@tommychang6500]

Was the Multiprise MCM from a Multiprise 2000 or 3000?

[@ollyshighlightreel6530]

This is nice to see, I work with AS/400 in the retail company I work for... We use AS/400 servers everywhere, a very realible system.

[@2.7petabytes]

Excellent, fascinating video! Many thanks!

[@graemedavidson499]

A very impressive collection of silicon! I often imagine microprocessors as miniature cities that electrons perform work in, and having watched the film Koyaanisqatsi, rather a metaphor for modern city life as humans replace electrons in function, ebbing and flowing through its infrastructure to our 24 hour clock.

[@randomunavailable]

I thought I knew a thing or two about computers, but server cpu's are a completely different species of technology.

[@sokolum]

could make a nice documentary out of this! the evolution and why it was made like that.

[@Petertronic]

I love the CPU die images, definitely works of art

[@ingusmant]

I know right? Holographic posters of these would be awesome

[@onesimpleclik]

those IBM chips are fascinating! never seen anything like them before

[@daoutbox9884]

One day in future someone may try to restore some super computer - last know part to exist damaged,. 👉💥

[@leyasep5919]

Please, next video should be about the Alpha CPU range ;-)

[@CorentinHarbelot]

Un peu jaloux de cette magnifique collection :) Thanks for sharing!!

[@robert-janvanloon1227]

How do you get the silicon die from the chip?

[@slick4401]

Antoine! Kazimir Malevich would approve of your collection. :-)

[@robcfg]

Great collection indeed! Thanks for sharing it! Is there any place where we can see Antoine's decap pictures?

[@jtveg]

Thanks so much for sharing. 😎👌🏼

[@ingusmant]

What secret ebay this guy uses that has this stuff? When I go there all I find are broken C64s and old powerbooks

[@aserta]

People who have been at the eBay game since the start have a lot of secret methods to get first prize and listings. Some bids are secret, like just for a certain group of people who know the listing title which can be just an alpha numerical grab, some are obfuscated. They list one item, but the actual bid or price is put on an entirely different one, and you'll never know unless you look. :)

[@fecheverria]

Amazing collection.

[@douro20]

Who made the virginal? It's hard to see the maker's name in the video.

[@dogcowdogcow]

A little surprised you didn't hit up the Musée des Arts et Métiers with its original Jacquard looms, among other things.

[@CuriousMarc]

I did, but I would need arrangements for a private visit to do a quality video. Awesome museum.

[@trailblazingfive]

Does this man (Dr. Antoine Bercovici) have a blog where publishes?

[@waldsteiger]

Most recent usage of a cray sc, helping with customs declaration of enormous heatsinks. Nice!

[@TheLaurentDupuis]

I worked on these fossils !

[@Authenictruthoid]

I work on the Mazon Creek Area fossils of Illinois.

[@leyasep5919]

Laurent : which ? :-)

[@160rpm]

@@leyasep5919 The AMD K5 :)

[@TheLaurentDupuis]

@@leyasep5919 S390 and a lot of IBM POWER

[@jayhall1234]

This is the kind of collector I aspire to be

[@Крщенебудуказати]

How many cost this weird processors?

[@totolastico]

Très intéressant, vivement la suite! thanks Marc.

[@Blizzard9500]

Fascinating! Thanks Marc. Merci beau coup.

[@leyasep5919]

10:48 I do too have Cray parts

[@TonyLambregts]

Love these videos.

[@williamsquires3070]

I’ve got a number of oddball IBM chips I salvaged years ago; some are 40-pin DIP packages (ceramic), while others are about 1-1/2” square, with a metal outer case that hides a ceramic substrate inside that actually has the IC dies on it (I disassembled one out of curiosity.) The pinout is non-standard, and all the parts from the board had custom house #’s on them, so Google is no help, here. One such has these markings on it: “5122242”,”IBM3414”,”ESD M”, and “1 304 414116”. I was going to toss them. They all came from a number of PC boards that may have been a mini-computer, or may have been telecommunications equipment; I don’t know. 😐

[@adberco]

These are numbers that predate the current NNXNNNN IBM part number format, up to at least the early 80's. These metal cans chips were inherited from the s/360 eras and are used for C4 flip chip die interconnect, something that IBM pioneered.

[@drakethedragon457]

So basically some of the processors here are faster than my PC?

[@kevinreardon2558]

I'm shocked you didn't include the abacuzioc period.

[@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365]

Nothing better than two geeks geeking out!

[@skfalpink123]

Wow! Those were BIG chips!

[@BertGrink]

Antoine is a true Polymath!

[@shifter65]

Link to the image?

[@stupossibleify]

Does Antoine have a website where we can see the chip images?

[@Spookieham]

Great video - thank you

[@RogerBarraud]

Pretty colours! :-)

[@Flying0Dismount]

Did they explain why some of the skeletons were wearing small blankets?

[@CuriousMarc]

They were afraid they would catch the Coronavirus ;-)

[@GoldSrc_]

By the silicon gods, those are beautiful.

[@melancholicwaffle]

you should definitely do some French language content! I know you've got at least one subscriber who would be interested in that sort of thing!

[@sheep1ewe]

This was awsome!! Love that guy!

[@hqqns]

@CuriousMarc I'm sure Ken was jealous not seeing all those CPUs and dies. I say that because I saw a youtube video where he talks about reverse engineering them.

[@CuriousMarc]

Antoine gave Ken a large box with many wafers of chips to reverse engineer. I'm sure you'll see some come out on his blog righto.com

[@patjackmanesq]

Thank you!

[@AlainHubert]

Vous auriez pu parler français et sous-titrer en anglais? Anyway, I still enjoyed that. Thanks for sharing.

[@CuriousMarc]

Ou faire une VF avec Electro-bidouilleur et un bel accent Canandien ;-)

[@tonerotonero1375]

Belle brochette de composants. L'évolution des composants intéresse peu de monde, c'est bien de conserver ça pour visualiser pas à pas comment nous sommes arrivés jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Belle collection en tout cas.

[@leyasep5919]

@@CuriousMarc et Deus Ex Silicium (même s'il a déjà une tonne de taf, j'imagine) J'ai qqs jolies pièces dans mes archives mais j'ai préféré me concentrer sur la réalisation que la collection simple. Le module SX5 me rappelle que j'ai assisté à la décommission de celui du CNRS et j'ai fait un long article à ce sujet dans Linux Magazine jvf.free.fr/550_Articles_LinuxMag/GLMF_084_006_018.pdf Contactez-moi siouplé !!! :-)

[@AlainHubert]

@@tonerotonero1375 En effet. Et je serais curieux de savoir à quoi pouvait bien servir tout ce hardware puissant à l'époque? Des serveurs, bien-sûr, mais quoi d'autre aussi?

[@AndroidFerret]

That's amazing... Really cool ...

[@te0nani]

We must bring back glorious ceramic packages with exposed DIEs.

[@edgeeffect]

That amphibian looks a lot like Eryops.... the common ancestor of all of we four-legs.

[@orinokonx01]

That is a very very impressive collection there. I would absolutely love to see more of these die scans. Does he have a website?

[@awlomthesheepermen]

These look like pigment paint samples on the thumbnail

[@ToTheGAMES]

I NEED MORE!

[@noth606]

Awesome in some ways but I'd much rather see them assembled and running than in this state. I've had several of the IBM chips in running machines over the years but my favorite above all was the Power2SC in an IBM m/397 workstation... unfortunately my ex decided to junk it without telling me or giving me a chance to rescue it so that one is gone :-(.

[@JosephPPreston]

Never seen you on youtube but the algorythm hit you. lets watch

[@VegasCyclingFreak]

Fascinating stuff

[@cspaceinfinity0116]

So cool the first tree

[@abc-ni9uw]

Gr8 video CM

[@max1024]

Great video :-) Cognitively, when we see MСM and especially their size, I understand that this is the past, but modern trends in processor construction are just going this way, just look at AMD Threadrippers.

[@CuriousMarc]

It’s always been with us. When you want to go beyond what Moore’s Law allows you to do in a single chip, you use MCMs. It’s just that when Moore’s Law was running full blast, it did not make economical sense to use MCMs in consumer designs. It still occasionally happened, like the Pentium Pro for example. Professional and military designs did use it all the time. But now that Moore’s Law has essentially stopped, MCMs are reappearing in consumer designs.

[@phpn99]

Some people have stamp collections

[@CuriousMarc]

They are the smart ones...

[@knallertk8062]

I cant wait to try this. :-)

[@knallertk8062]

oops. that ment for the previuos video, with the ic chips :-)

[@justforfunvideohobby]

Antoine is Mike's French doppleganger