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Re:Die photos and analysis of the revolutionary 8008 micropr... by kens on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @02:38AM (#23400592)
The "extra" polysilicon region is a capacitor made of silicon and polysilicon. These capacitors were a "bootstrap load", essentially a way to drive a transistor harder to get a stronger output. The capacitors you're looking at are for the instruction register to drive the signals through the instruction decoder (basically a PLA). Since the decoder is fairly large, the signals into it need to be boosted. I haven't looked at this for several years, so I may be wrong about some of this.

http://www.intel4004.com/btstrp.htm

Re:Die photos and analysis of the revolutionary 8008 micropr... by bogomipz on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @05:49PM (#23409246)
Your link has a great pic of the original schematic print out. Might you or anyone else know if there is a high-res version of the printout online anywhere? Cheers.