Intel's Navajo Navajo Pentium rug is a ridiculously exact likeness of a ’90s CPU

Imagine yourself wandering through a textile exhibition and stumbling upon a Navajo carpet that looked like an Intel processor. Ken Shirriff, a computer historian, was recently strolling through the National Gallery of Art at Washington D.C. when he stumbled across a Navajo rug that looked like an Intel CPU.

Could this be an incredibly unlikely case of art unintentionally copying life? Shirriff notes that the similarities between high-level integrated circuit design (HMIC) and Navajo designs have been noted since the 1960s.

What exactly was going on? Could a Navajo weaver from centuries ago have somehow channeled circuit design from centuries later? Was it a fluke or a miracle?

The rug is not symmetrical, which is a clue that it's not a traditional design. The wool weaving was commissioned by Intel for the American Indian Science & Engineering Society in the 1990s.

The weaving was based off a die-shot of an original Intel Pentium Processor from the early 1990s, which contained around three million transistors. It was fabbed with a 500nm processing.

Shirriff posted images of the rug on Techspot, alongside die shots of a chip. The resemblance between the two is astounding. Shirriff believes that the wool weave is accurate, and "that each area can be marked with the corresponding function on the real chip." He did exactly that.

It's also detailed enough to identify it as a 1994 "P54C", revision of the OG P5 Pentium from 1993. The piece was woven by Marilou Schotz in 1994, a Navajo/Dine weaver and math teacher.

The design appeared to be a mirror-image of the original layout. The weave is reversible and has no front or back. Shirriff realized that The National Gallery had displayed the piece in the wrong direction.

"This probably doesn't bother anyone else but me," he says. Ken, we're also affected by this OCD.

The rug, which was part of the Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstractions exhibit at the Gallery, that ran until the end of July, is no longer on display.

It is not known when the piece will be displayed again.