Hardware · May 23
Garden Shed DRAM: What DIY Memory Fabrication Teaches About Semiconductor Physics
A teardown analysis of micron-scale memory fabrication reveals the elegant physics hiding inside every RAM chip
- DRAM cells are simple capacitor-transistor pairs where physics complexity comes from micron-scale materials behavior, not exotic processes
- DIY fabrication reveals that semiconductor physics is accessible; industrial scaling and yield requirements drive manufacturing costs
- Hands-on device fabrication builds engineering intuition impossible to develop from theory alone