Taipei’s Chip Designers Leave Easter Eggs in Street Graffiti
By Syed John
Hardware engineers blow off steam by painting circuit schematics with hidden riddles.
Walk through Taipei’s Da’an district and you’ll spot murals that double as circuit diagrams. Turns out chip designers from Hsinchu unwind by painting graffiti with embedded logic gates. Decode the mural and you’ll find hints about upcoming chiplet architectures.
Management pretends not to notice because morale has never been higher. Fans photograph the art like treasure hunts, while engineers finally get credit as creatives. Some murals even hide recruitment QR codes.
In a city where semiconductor IP is guarded like gold, this playful leak culture is refreshing. It reminds us that behind every SOC is a bored artist dying to draw more than rectangles.