I’ve noticed that Intel has been putting images of the bare dies (dice?) in their advertising campaign. Above is an image I screen-grabbed from an article on NYTimes.com. The pink-blue-orange photo of a Core2 processor before it gets packaged up into an installable chip is actually quite beautiful. Of course, this resolution doesn’t really do it justice: see for example this press-kit photo: cnrmrm-die.jpg (sans crazy-electric color scheme). I wonder if this is indicative of a wider change in people’s perception of computer equipment, i.e. that a chunk of silicon can be sexy, or if it’s simply an appeal to a specific subset of internet-types who get all excited about MIPS and such. Intel has a history of advertising on TV—anyone seen their ads recently? Do they show any naked silicon? I’d take a TV ad as a much wider appeal to the public’s senses than the Times. I’d like to think that people aren’t as intimidated by computers these days as they once were, and the idea of seeing their innards has become more of a turn-on than a turn-off.
