On 1/24/06, Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote:
I've been dying to ask this question. Can you
actually learn something (hopefully a whole lot!)
about a chip if you actually did this??? What if there
was some old chip for which there is no documentation.
If, given the availability of the proper equipment
(surface grinder?), you were able to take off say
.0001" of material at a time, or thereabouts ;), would
you have the ability to photograph it, and have
something in the way of a working schematic?
I don't know if features would be immediately identifiable, but with
some work it should be possible. I know of a company that was
attempting to build silicon debugger using a high speed image
intensified camera to watch photons emitted by the transistors as they
pass current. Should work for reverse engineering... Given a couple
years and $500,000 I could probably build you one.... Then again I
would imagine that the device is patented.
Eric