I'm wondering how far of the ability to print out CPU. Certianly would appear th...

duskwuff · on Sept 19, 2012

> I'm wondering how far of the ability to print out CPU.

None. Current 3D printers can only print in a couple materials as of present (mostly plastics), none of which are semiconductors.

The resolution is nowhere near what you'd need for that, anyway. 100 micron resolution sounds pretty small, but it's still about a tenth the resolution of 70s-era semiconductors (10 µm), and about 4500 times the resolution of current tech (22 nm).

vidarh · on Sept 20, 2012

He said how far off. And from the sounds of it: Not all that far.

As you say, 70's era is only a magnitude way. And so they need some new materials - that will come.

I'm sure there are people aching to be able to make, e.g. MOS 6502's at home just for the sake of doing it.

Zenst · on Sept 20, 2012

The time it would take me to design a CPU from scratch then I feel it is something that will be viable come that day I'm close to hitting print. But not today or any year soon then, but one day in my lifetime (cancer pending).

duskwuff · on Sept 20, 2012

If you want to build your own CPU, learn Verilog and get a FPGA development kit. It's totally doable; here's an excellent example of what can result:

http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/parallelogram/index.php

You can get a decent Xilinx board for under $200; the "web edition" of their dev tools are free.