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'Silicon' is a new five-pound art book charting the semiconductor revolution with full-page die shots and commentary — 384 page tome is $99 to pre-order now
Arena has announced its first book, which is simply called Silicon. Best known for its magazine, which celebrates American ingenuity in business, technology, and civilization, Arena’s stylish and premium “coffee table book like no other” is up for pre-order now. Silicon is priced at $99, including tax and free shipping in the U.S. and Canada. Expect it to make a five-pound impression on your doormat in May.
Announcing our first book: SiliconA beautiful coffee table book about the world of transistors, chips, and the greatest technology revolution of all time.384 pages. Almost five pounds. Preorders open now, shipping in May: https://t.co/IlOEZHHWin pic.twitter.com/bkzIl9ZcYYMarch 18, 2026
Silicon is described by Arena, not as a dense scientific technical work, but as “an art book and anthology.” In other words, it isn’t only for semiconductor wizards like Anton Shilov. I think it will also appeal to pea-brained folk like myself, or anyone else who appreciates the visual appeal of technology, enhanced by the book’s great presentation and print quality.
On the topic of physical quality, Arena boasts that Silicon has a “special foil stamped cover, a genuine thread binding, and 384 pages of European archival paper.” The shimmering light-diffracting cover particularly hits the coffee table segment right in the bullseye.
As an anthology, readers get 10 independent chapters to absorb. The prose is liberally punctuated with “hundreds of full-page photographs of computer chips from the last 50 years,” explains the pre-order website. So, you can dip into Silicon willy-nilly for any of the 10 self-contained segments. Might we suggest some matching bookmarks?
The first chapter is called Teaching Sand to Think and was penned by Dylan Patel & Jeff Koch. You may have seen Patel mentioned on Tom’s Hardware from time to time, due to the SemiAnalysis semiconductor industry insights and reports he often shares. Other chapters cover subjects such as Moore’s Law, ASML’s Throne, the Nvidia Factor, and more.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Silicon chapters
Teaching Sand to Think Dylan Patel & Jeff Koch
The inside story of how technologists are turning silicon into machine intelligence.
Waiting for Berzelius Julia Steinberg
How a Swedish chemist isolated silicon and anticipated the search for machine consciousness.
The Czochralski Crucible Brian Balkus
The Polish scientist who made silicon pure enough for computers was buried in an unmarked grave.
And Then There Were Eight Maxwell Meyer
The story of how the “Traitorous Eight” created the foundations of Silicon Valley.
Moore’s Laws Rob L’Heureux
The sixty‑year marathon to fulfill Gordon Moore’s predictions of exponential semiconductor growth.
ASML’s Throne Stephen McBride
How a struggling startup in a leaky Dutch shed built the most important and complex machine in the world.
The Nvidia Factor Zaitoon Zafar
The story of how Jensen Huang transformed Nvidia from a gaming company into the engine of the AI revolution.
After Complexity Anna‑Sofia Lesiv
In building machines that “think,” humans have created systems so complex we no longer fully understand them.
Freedom in the Silicon Age Miquel Vila
Silicon technologies are young—what might they mean across the long arc of human history?
The Silicon Man Ginevra Davis
Are humans biological bootloaders for our silicon successors?
The animated GIF in Arena’s social media posts promoting Silicon, as well as the product page’s visual carousel, provide a decent preview of leafing through this weighty tome. Its looks like it could be an essential read to discover silicon, "the element that built modernity." Furthermore, it will provide perspective to “the world of transistors, chips, and the greatest technology revolution of all time,” reckons Arena.
Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
I'm fascinated by annotated die shots, especially where someone works out the approximate area and other things you can glean from them. Here's one of the best examples of that I've seen:
https://locuza.substack.com/p/die-walkthrough-alder-lake-sp-and
Sadly, that account has been inactive for the past 3 years.
More recently, we've seen some die walkthroughs, such as this one of Arrow Lake, by creator HighYield:
wusyYscQi0oView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wusyYscQi0o
Most of them seem to use die shots by Fritzchens Fritz, which I recently consulted to figure out how my Raptor Lake die was oriented in the package (it seems that the P-cores are located at the "south" end). I wonder if the book uses any of his photos?
