through the cleanrooms of the semiconductor industry.

See a microprocessor in the making at one of AMD's chip factories.

Let our experts walk you through the nano cosmos,

the world of the atom.

A world that normally remains hidden from our eyes.

In the beginning is the circuit diagram.

At design centers all around the globe, experts collaborate to design the brains

behind super computers and servers, high-end notebooks and PCs.

The next step is manufacturing.

The disc substrates for the microchips are made from quartz sand

and are called silicon wafers.

To make these wafers

a huge mono crystal is drawn from purified silicon melt.

The result

is a perfect silicon lattice into which the transistors will later be fitted.

However, impurities pose a threat to these flawless silicon crystals.

Our AMD manufacturing teams must therefore take extensive precautions

every time they enter our dust free cleanrooms.

The result,

our wafers are fabricated in an environment that is more than one

hundred thousand times cleaner than an operating theater.

Completely free of dust, the silicon discs arrive at the cleanroom.

Here,

25 wafers are packed into each hermetically sealed container and sent off

on a journey that will take them through hundreds of manufacturing steps.

Photo lithographic techniques transfer the circuit structures to the wafers,

rather like slide projection.

The key to this whole process is a solid mastery of light.

The silicon disc is spin coated with a photosensitive resist.

UV light transfers the circuit structures imprinted on a mask to the wafer.

The exposed parts of the resist are soluble

and are removed by developing fluid.

The transferred structures can now be used as a template.

The unprotected parts of the wafer surface are etched away.

The structures of billions of small current switches are generated on

each wafer;

tiny transistors.

From the photo lithographic stage,

wafers move on to the ion implantation

where the electrical properties of the transistors will be established.

Here the engineers make good use of one of silicon's most unique properties.

Silicon is a semiconductor,

which means that it's conductivity can change via high-precision emplacement of

so-called dopant atoms.

Dopant atoms are shot into the silicon structures.

Initially,

these atoms are distributed unevenly in the silicon lattice.

At high temperatures the dopant atoms become flexible

and take over a fixed position in the atomic structure.

The complexity of manufacturing tiny transistors

requires a clean room as big as two soccer fields.

While our people monitor the complex processes,

automated manufacturing itself always takes place within hermetically sealed

production lines.

Copper dominates the next process.

Finest interconnect wires link up billions of separate transistors to form

integrated circuits.

Before that can happen, however,

cleaning is essential for the wafers as particles lurk at every stage in the

manufacturing process.

Before the copper is poured into the trenches for the interconnects

a barrier layer is applied.

It helps to prevent short circuits and guarantees reliability.

The trenches are then filled with copper.

Finally,

the excess copper is ground down to the edges of the trenches.

This insulates each interconnect from the others.

A microchip made of copper wiring,

established AMD as the first company in the world to adopt copper in volume production,

a foundation for state of the art multi-core processors

that AMD is introducing today in all product areas.

To keep us on the leading edge of the world's chip makers,

electron microscopes constantly monitor every step of manufacturing,

down to the atomic structures of each individual transistor.

In two months

the wafer

is ready.

Huge integrated circuits

consisting of conductors with the length of many kilometers

link up one hundred billion transistors on numerous levels.

And that,

in a space no larger than a fingernail.

AMD in Dresden,

one of the most advanced chip factories on earth

and a testing ground for the very latest microelectronic innovations from around

the globe.

Germany's

high-tech capital.

All that remains now is the last production step:

the packaging.

Tin-silver pellets are applied to the wafers,

linking the chips to the frame.

With the finest saw blades,

the microprocessors are cut from the wafers

then bonded to the frames

and sealed with a cover.