I laughed at the bit where the gallery picked the wrong side of the rug to display, but this got me thinking -- presumably all the die photos we see are from the etched side of the wafer, what does it look like on the other side? Is it just all flat?
The other side is plain gray silicon; I've looked at the back side of dies by mistake many times. (Intel is starting to do power through the back side, which would make the back more interesting.)
Note that it's entirely transparent to some wavelengths of light, which is why a lot of die shots are taken from the backside, as it allows doing them non-destructively. You just cannot use visible light.
"Such hearts, such brains, would be unable to comprehend that one's attachment to a masterpiece may be utterly overwhelming, especially when it is the underside of the weave that entrances the beholder and only begetter, whose own past intercoils there with the fate of the innocent author."
--- Nabokov, "Pale Fire"
