This is a silicon boule used to make semiconductor chips, and was donated to Griffin MSI by IBM. It’s a synthetically-produced ingot and can be made several different ways. In the more common process, a seed crystal is mounted onto the tip of a rotating shaft, dipped into pure molten silicon and slowly pulled out. The molten silicon grows on the seed crystal in a crystalline fashion, and eventually solidifies into a large, cylindrical boule. This whole process can take up to 48 hours to complete. A semiconductor crystal boule is then sliced into wafers about the thickness of a dime using a diamond saw. A robotic arm then removes the wafer and places it onto a wafer carrier which carried it to other equipment that grind and polish it.

By the late 1950s, silicon replaced previous materials to become the dominant semiconductor material. This then paved the way for what is often called the “Silicon Revolution”. The term “Silicon Age” also comes from silicon since it was the dominant material in computing, in much the same way as Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age are defined by the dominant materials used in each of those time periods.