We all know that CPU engineers have a grinding job and are likely under a tremendous amount of stress. There has to be a better way to blow of steam than killing hookers and hiding them in your trunk, right? The Smithsonian (yeah, those guys) have a small collection of silicon artwork that is has rounded up that show us what engineers used to doodle when they had a bit of extra wafer room. I would suggest engineers are still doing this today, but these types of examples are much harder to find down on the IC. The one below is from AMD, but not dated. A pretty cool Godzilla in there too.



These chip art images were made visible through lapping techniques, magnification and Polaroid capturing. Typically chips have a unique “signature” which we have come to recognize and expect to be logic, memory, gates, etc. However, these signatures are the designer’s, the engineer’s and in some cases a company logo.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Hidden Art of the 20th Century – Geek Edition