The Pentium as a Navajo weaving

September 1, 2024 5:14 PM

Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract pattern. Suddenly, I realized the pattern was strangely familiar, so I stopped and looked closely. The design turned out to be an image of Intel's Pentium chip, the start of the long-lived Pentium family.
posted by Monday, stony Monday (18 comments total)

oh this is cool as hell
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:51 PM on September 1 [5 favorites]

^ ^ what Doctor Fedora said.

This is my favorite kind of deep dive into some unnoticed thing that has an impossibly fascinating backstory. Best of the web, thanks for sharing!
posted by kinsey at 6:06 PM on September 1

Best of the web!
posted by brambleboy at 6:21 PM on September 1

The same chip that couldn't compute right? From the company that made the Itanic?

The reason they still exist is savvy marketing.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:24 PM on September 1

Doom 2 will not run properly on that weaving.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:27 PM on September 1 [6 favorites]

Even without Doom2, that is an awesome weaving
posted by blob at 6:49 PM on September 1

WOW

What a rich set of stories, and beautiful art! My aunt taught kindergarten for forty years in Navajo, NM, a small town near to Window Rock and Gallup, and so this story really touches my heart. I learned so much that I’d never known - the USG culled Navajo sheep herds so hard from the 30s through the 50s that a breed was driven to the brink of extinction?! Not to mention the devastation to local livelihoods - the kiddos my aunt taught would have been directly affected by that iron-fisted choice. Argh. Fwooo. Thank you for sharing this!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 7:24 PM on September 1 [5 favorites]

The same chip that couldn't compute right?

No, it's a later revision of the Pentium, the P54C.
posted by wierdo at 7:26 PM on September 1 [1 favorite]

Navajo weaving. Navajo origin stories tell of spider woman as teacher.
posted by Brian B. at 8:16 PM on September 1 [3 favorites]

Agree. Cool. Thanks for posting.
posted by theora55 at 9:03 PM on September 1

I love that he noticed it was hung backwards
posted by edward_5000 at 9:23 PM on September 1 [2 favorites]

Fascinating!
posted by NikitaNikita at 11:22 PM on September 1

Incredible craftsmanship on the weaving, and an incredible and unexpected ride in the writing. Great post, thanks for sharing!
posted by Dysk at 1:26 AM on September 2 [1 favorite]

Beautiful weaving, but as a rule one should be suspicious of industrial history that almost exclusively quotes executives and political leaders and leaves the workers silent. Inevitably you get a narrative where the interests of workers and bosses are completely aligned, job creation is an unambiguous good, but fair pay is the fuel for social disease. I think it's pretty obvious that the AIM plant takeover wasn't the real reason for closing a supposedly successful plant. I mean surely that mass layoff wasn't for no reason? Also shocking that arms manufacturing in the 60s would get a mention without any acknowledgment of what those arms were being used for, but what else is new.
posted by jy4m at 2:32 AM on September 3

Mod note: [Great post, thanks, Monday, stony Monday! We've added it to the sidebar and Best Of blog.]
posted by taz (staff) at 3:00 AM on September 3

> Doom 2 will not run properly on that weaving.

I'm sure there's a patch for that!
posted by Pronoiac at 10:40 AM on September 3

I used to walk past one of Schultz's rugs on my way to my desk at work at a community college. Let's just say the placard next to it skipped over the historic link between Fairchild and the Navejo.
posted by pwnguin at 10:45 AM on September 3 [1 favorite]

As to why Ken Shirriff would recognize a Pentium die photo: He reverse-engineers integrated circuits. He made a post on the standard cells used in the Pentium.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 11:45 AM on September 3