Every processor die anyone has photographed and given away

A volunteer group of die photographers—most prominently Pauli Rautakorpi, Moscow-based ZeptoBars, John McMaster and the photographer known as Fritzchens Fritz—has published a free image library covering 356 processors spanning 1972 to 2024. The collection lets users click any chip for a high-resolution view, and a true-scale mode renders the 114 dies with known dimensions side by side, showing 1970s silicon as a speck beside modern chips. The project matters because decapping and microscope photography is costly and rarely done outside manufacturers, so the archive gives engineers, historians and hobbyists a shared visual record of five decades of chip evolution. What to watch next is whether the library keeps pace with new releases and fills in missing die sizes, which would make the scale comparisons more complete.