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This 22-Year-Old Builds Chips in His Parents' Garage

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Tom Simonite

Business
01.20.2022 07:00 AM

This 22-Year-Old Builds Chips in His Parents' Garage

Sam Zeloof combines 1970s-era machines with homemade designs. His
creations show what's possible for small-scale silicon tinkerers.

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Sam Zeloof holding his second generation computer chip up to a
magnifying glass in his garage
Sam Zeloof completed this homemade computer chip with 1,200
transistors, seen under a magnifying glass, in August 2021.
Photograph: Sam Kang

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In August, chipmaker Intel revealed new details about its plan to
build a "mega-fab" on US soil, a $100 billion factory where 10,000
workers will make a new generation of powerful processors studded
with billions of transistors. The same month, 22-year-old Sam Zeloof
announced his own semiconductor milestone. It was achieved alone in
his family's New Jersey garage, about 30 miles from where the first
transistor was made at Bell Labs in 1947.

[Tom]
Tom Simonite is a senior writer for WIRED in San Francisco covering
artificial intelligence and its effects on the world. He once trained
an artificial neural network to generate seascapes and is available
for commissions. Simonite was previously San Francisco bureau chief
at MIT Technology Review, and wrote and edited... Read more
Senior Writer

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TopicsmicrochipschipsSemiconductorsIntel
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