6 ms·

That’s a Big Microscope

95 points by etiam 9y ago

ChuckMcM 9y ago
That is pretty intense. I wonder sometimes if it is a deterrent to nation states to put 'secret' back doors into silicon because a device like this would be able to prove that the device had a back door. That said, converting a 3D image of a microprocessor level into a Minecraft world would be pretty awesome!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- archgoon 9y ago
  I think proving that there is a backdoor isn't a concern. A useful backdoor could probably be passed off as an engineering error. The bigger issue is that the backdoor, if exploitable by anyone, could become known.
- Avshalom 9y ago
  TFA says it's only good to 14 nm but fabs are already down to 10 nm so I mean this isn't a deterrent. I don't know how STEM are for looking at chips or if we've got even more powerful microscopes but this particular one isn't good enough to stop a dedicated state level actor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer
  - beisner 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure you'd still be able to recognize structures/logic, even if you weren't able to exactly identify all the gory parts of a transistor.
  - dmitrygr 9y ago
    the "14" in "14nm" does not refer to any particular dimension. Most structures in an 14nm chip are quite a bit larger than 14nm. It has been many years since the X in "Xnm" actually measured anything. eg: https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Slide1-1.jpg https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Slide... More details exist online, for example this writeup: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246902-intel-claims-three-year-advantage-10nm-process-wants-change-define-process-nodes https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246902-intel-claims-th...
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    No, quite the contrary Smaller processes are not very well refined at the moment, and anything that matters is 14nm or bigger You're not building critical stuff on the smaller processes until they're very mature
  - rsfern 9y ago
    TEM really isn't the right tool for reversing large integrated circuits. The sample prep is too finicky and involves slicing out a razor-thin sliver of material to image. You'd use it to get atomic resolution images of say a single transistor, maybe. SEM with serial sectioning is the way to go. I'm sure people are using conventional SEMs for this already, but you could conceivably map entire circuits at high resolution (4nm) pretty quickly with one of the new multi-beam systems. Check out the SRAM cells on slide 17 o this SANDIA report (pdf warning) [0]. [0]: https://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/1296536 https://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/1296536
- strebler 9y ago
  A standard Scanning Electron Microscope can do down to 0.1 nm, so this isn't really letting us see anything we couldn't before. SEMs are regularly used to reverse engineer chips. The main difference is that the one in the article is non-destructive, whereas with a SEM you have to strip the sample (and do imaging) layer by layer.
  - userbinator 9y ago
    ...and a nation state has plenty of budget to buy even multiple chips to RE destructively.
- elihu 9y ago
  Looking for backdoors could possibly turn up something interesting, but I would suspect that most backdoors if they exist are going to be in the microcode/firmware rather than the hardware. Assuming it's an encrypted blob you can't inspect outside of a running system, you'd probably have to scan both the physical layout of the chip and the electrical state, and then load both into some kind of simulator for debugging.
- JoachimSchipper 9y ago
  (Late to the party, but:) You may be interested in the active line of academic research into making "undetectable" hardware Trojans by subtly messing with circuits. It looks like http://asiaccs2017.com/slides/Paar.pdf http://asiaccs2017.com/slides/Paar.pdf (currently down, Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kHlrZtaBvGEJ:asiaccs2017.com/slides/Paar.pdf+&cd=12&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl&client=firefox-b http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kHlrZta...) is a good introduction.
Animats 9y ago
That's the other approach to extreme ultraviolet lithography - a synchrotron. If you don't like the two-story machine that vaporizes tin droplets with lasers to make soft X-rays, one of these is an option. It's been tried experimentally.[1] [1] http://www.lightsource.ca/ http://www.lightsource.ca/
jszymborski 9y ago
a little OT, but does anyone have some insight on the liability an author has to linking to an article on sci-hub like OP did?
- mherdeg 9y ago
  Huh yeah whatever did happen to Judge Kaplan's ruling restricting certain speech that contained hyperlinks? (See http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/07/technology/assessing-linking-liability.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/07/technology/assessing-linki... and https://www.wired.com/2000/08/only-news-thats-fit-to-link https://www.wired.com/2000/08/only-news-thats-fit-to-link .)
Koshkin 9y ago
I find it sad that the reverse-engineering of microchips is considered a worthwhile activity, to the point of being the first (if not the only) thing that the poster thinks of as a potential application of this formidable device.
- bitexploder 9y ago
  That is kind of Bunnie's thing and why someone would be most likely tuning in to the blog. Yes it could do a lot of other stuff, but the readers of that blog don't care so much about the other applications.
- smhost 9y ago
  bunnie is a famous hacker, and this is his personal blog.
- XorNot 9y ago
  Why would it not be worthwhile? In a world or proprietary products and DRM systems, reverse engineering is a way to preserve our technological history and future.
- mickronome 9y ago
  I don't really get this attitude, what's wrong with reverse engineering? I would really like to get opportunity to work with reverse engineering microchips using some reasonably good tools, and I really have zero reason to do it except that I think it would be super-fun! You can also bet a pretty penny that the first thought that pops into my mind when I see 14nm and 3D X-ray in the same sentence is: That would be awesome to reverse engineer some chips with! Not that I have the skills, not the time. Figuring out how things work is just fascinating to bothe me, and a lot of other people. Doing it (nostly) without the plans is the only way it can be that real, and fun challenge for me. It's similar in character and as subversive as solving crosswords, or riddles at it's core. Since we don't go about complaining about people solving crosswords, why do reverse engineering always get so much flak? It's almost literally the engineer version of crosswords or sudokus.
  - munin 9y ago
quickthrower 9y ago
Makes me sad working in an open plan office when I could be working in an inspiring building like that baby.
- amluto 9y ago
  Having visited the old light source building at SLAC, the inside is not an inspiring workspace. It was never intended to be a light source, so the beamlines (i.e. the business end) were crammed under the struts and widgets that kept the synchrotron working. Not an economic win. Also, no windows. The newer buildings are probably nicer. I bet they have foosball tables, too.
mrob 9y ago
If you're interested in synchrotrons, you might want to watch Dave Jones's EEVblog 1 hour long tour video of the Australian Synchrotron, which is a similar size to the Swiss Light Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27KRtJ-2sVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27KRtJ-2sVY
mgibbs63 9y ago
Synchrotron lightsources are a dime a dozen. For real power, you want a free electron laser. The Linac Coherent Light Source at SLAC (right in Silicon Valley's back yard) pumps out an X-ray beam with about 750,000 times as many photons per second, and in pulses that are about 200 times faster. https://portal.slac.stanford.edu/sites/lcls_public/aboutlcls/Pages/default.aspx https://portal.slac.stanford.edu/sites/lcls_public/aboutlcls...
- kuschku 9y ago
  If you want even larger systems, you should check out the European XFEL, which was just opened, and is now the most powerful free electron laser in existence. http://www.xfel.eu/ http://www.xfel.eu/ It’s quite a sight.
  - mgibbs63 9y ago
    As a die hard LCLS supporter, I have to say: XFEL has the more powerful electron beam, but LCLS is still in the lead in terms of X-rays right now (if pulse intensity/peak power is the measure). XFEL is really an amazing machine, though, and once it is fully commissioned, it will take the X-ray crown as well.
- sargun 9y ago
  Couple questions: 1) How do you steer an FEL? 2) These seem like they'd be pretty good for destroying hardware (drones, cell phones). Is that true?
  - etiam 9y ago
    On (2), I do know that FEL analysis of small samples such as the ones for protein structure analysis entails completely disintegrating them (off goes all the electrons, then the nuclei quickly realize they have nothing in common anymore and decide to go their separate ways), and analyzing the structure is done on the basis of reading the radiation scatter patterns from the instant between when the beam makes contact and when the molecule has utterly lost the structure in question. I think it would be safe to say FEL isn't exactly non-destructive for hardware.
logicallee 9y ago
"chips down to a resolution of 14.6nm" so does that mean that that whole giant stadium of a microscope can't image at the resolution that ships in chips today? (e.g. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/237781-samsungs-10nm-node-socs-now-in-mass-production https://www.extremetech.com/computing/237781-samsungs-10nm-n... ). please correct me if I've gotten it wrong!
- kuschku 9y ago
  That’s actually correct. If you want to go further, you’ll need to use Stanford’s Linac (0.15nm) or the just opened European XFEL (0.05nm)

95 points by etiam 9y ago

That is pretty intense. I wonder sometimes if it is a deterrent to nation states to put 'secret' back doors into silicon because a device like this would be able to prove that the device had a back door. That said, converting a 3D image of a microprocessor level into a Minecraft world would be pretty awesome!

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
archgoon 9y ago
I think proving that there is a backdoor isn't a concern. A useful backdoor could probably be passed off as an engineering error. The bigger issue is that the backdoor, if exploitable by anyone, could become known.
Avshalom 9y ago
TFA says it's only good to 14 nm but fabs are already down to 10 nm so I mean this isn't a deterrent. I don't know how STEM are for looking at chips or if we've got even more powerful microscopes but this particular one isn't good enough to stop a dedicated state level actor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer
- beisner 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure you'd still be able to recognize structures/logic, even if you weren't able to exactly identify all the gory parts of a transistor.
- dmitrygr 9y ago
  the "14" in "14nm" does not refer to any particular dimension. Most structures in an 14nm chip are quite a bit larger than 14nm. It has been many years since the X in "Xnm" actually measured anything. eg: https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Slide1-1.jpg https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Slide... More details exist online, for example this writeup: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246902-intel-claims-three-year-advantage-10nm-process-wants-change-define-process-nodes https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246902-intel-claims-th...
- raverbashing 9y ago
  No, quite the contrary Smaller processes are not very well refined at the moment, and anything that matters is 14nm or bigger You're not building critical stuff on the smaller processes until they're very mature
- rsfern 9y ago
  TEM really isn't the right tool for reversing large integrated circuits. The sample prep is too finicky and involves slicing out a razor-thin sliver of material to image. You'd use it to get atomic resolution images of say a single transistor, maybe. SEM with serial sectioning is the way to go. I'm sure people are using conventional SEMs for this already, but you could conceivably map entire circuits at high resolution (4nm) pretty quickly with one of the new multi-beam systems. Check out the SRAM cells on slide 17 o this SANDIA report (pdf warning) [0]. [0]: https://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/1296536 https://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/1296536
strebler 9y ago
A standard Scanning Electron Microscope can do down to 0.1 nm, so this isn't really letting us see anything we couldn't before. SEMs are regularly used to reverse engineer chips. The main difference is that the one in the article is non-destructive, whereas with a SEM you have to strip the sample (and do imaging) layer by layer.
- userbinator 9y ago
  ...and a nation state has plenty of budget to buy even multiple chips to RE destructively.
elihu 9y ago
Looking for backdoors could possibly turn up something interesting, but I would suspect that most backdoors if they exist are going to be in the microcode/firmware rather than the hardware. Assuming it's an encrypted blob you can't inspect outside of a running system, you'd probably have to scan both the physical layout of the chip and the electrical state, and then load both into some kind of simulator for debugging.
JoachimSchipper 9y ago
(Late to the party, but:) You may be interested in the active line of academic research into making "undetectable" hardware Trojans by subtly messing with circuits. It looks like http://asiaccs2017.com/slides/Paar.pdf http://asiaccs2017.com/slides/Paar.pdf (currently down, Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kHlrZtaBvGEJ:asiaccs2017.com/slides/Paar.pdf+&cd=12&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl&client=firefox-b http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kHlrZta...) is a good introduction.

Animats 9y ago

That's the other approach to extreme ultraviolet lithography - a synchrotron. If you don't like the two-story machine that vaporizes tin droplets with lasers to make soft X-rays, one of these is an option. It's been tried experimentally.[1] [1] http://www.lightsource.ca/ http://www.lightsource.ca/

jszymborski 9y ago

a little OT, but does anyone have some insight on the liability an author has to linking to an article on sci-hub like OP did?

mherdeg 9y ago
Huh yeah whatever did happen to Judge Kaplan's ruling restricting certain speech that contained hyperlinks? (See http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/07/technology/assessing-linking-liability.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/07/technology/assessing-linki... and https://www.wired.com/2000/08/only-news-thats-fit-to-link https://www.wired.com/2000/08/only-news-thats-fit-to-link .)

Koshkin 9y ago

I find it sad that the reverse-engineering of microchips is considered a worthwhile activity, to the point of being the first (if not the only) thing that the poster thinks of as a potential application of this formidable device.

bitexploder 9y ago
That is kind of Bunnie's thing and why someone would be most likely tuning in to the blog. Yes it could do a lot of other stuff, but the readers of that blog don't care so much about the other applications.
smhost 9y ago
bunnie is a famous hacker, and this is his personal blog.
XorNot 9y ago
Why would it not be worthwhile? In a world or proprietary products and DRM systems, reverse engineering is a way to preserve our technological history and future.
mickronome 9y ago
I don't really get this attitude, what's wrong with reverse engineering? I would really like to get opportunity to work with reverse engineering microchips using some reasonably good tools, and I really have zero reason to do it except that I think it would be super-fun! You can also bet a pretty penny that the first thought that pops into my mind when I see 14nm and 3D X-ray in the same sentence is: That would be awesome to reverse engineer some chips with! Not that I have the skills, not the time. Figuring out how things work is just fascinating to bothe me, and a lot of other people. Doing it (nostly) without the plans is the only way it can be that real, and fun challenge for me. It's similar in character and as subversive as solving crosswords, or riddles at it's core. Since we don't go about complaining about people solving crosswords, why do reverse engineering always get so much flak? It's almost literally the engineer version of crosswords or sudokus.
- munin 9y ago

quickthrower 9y ago

Makes me sad working in an open plan office when I could be working in an inspiring building like that baby.

amluto 9y ago
Having visited the old light source building at SLAC, the inside is not an inspiring workspace. It was never intended to be a light source, so the beamlines (i.e. the business end) were crammed under the struts and widgets that kept the synchrotron working. Not an economic win. Also, no windows. The newer buildings are probably nicer. I bet they have foosball tables, too.

mrob 9y ago

If you're interested in synchrotrons, you might want to watch Dave Jones's EEVblog 1 hour long tour video of the Australian Synchrotron, which is a similar size to the Swiss Light Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27KRtJ-2sVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27KRtJ-2sVY

mgibbs63 9y ago

Synchrotron lightsources are a dime a dozen. For real power, you want a free electron laser. The Linac Coherent Light Source at SLAC (right in Silicon Valley's back yard) pumps out an X-ray beam with about 750,000 times as many photons per second, and in pulses that are about 200 times faster. https://portal.slac.stanford.edu/sites/lcls_public/aboutlcls/Pages/default.aspx https://portal.slac.stanford.edu/sites/lcls_public/aboutlcls...

kuschku 9y ago
If you want even larger systems, you should check out the European XFEL, which was just opened, and is now the most powerful free electron laser in existence. http://www.xfel.eu/ http://www.xfel.eu/ It’s quite a sight.
- mgibbs63 9y ago
  As a die hard LCLS supporter, I have to say: XFEL has the more powerful electron beam, but LCLS is still in the lead in terms of X-rays right now (if pulse intensity/peak power is the measure). XFEL is really an amazing machine, though, and once it is fully commissioned, it will take the X-ray crown as well.
sargun 9y ago
Couple questions: 1) How do you steer an FEL? 2) These seem like they'd be pretty good for destroying hardware (drones, cell phones). Is that true?
- etiam 9y ago
  On (2), I do know that FEL analysis of small samples such as the ones for protein structure analysis entails completely disintegrating them (off goes all the electrons, then the nuclei quickly realize they have nothing in common anymore and decide to go their separate ways), and analyzing the structure is done on the basis of reading the radiation scatter patterns from the instant between when the beam makes contact and when the molecule has utterly lost the structure in question. I think it would be safe to say FEL isn't exactly non-destructive for hardware.

logicallee 9y ago

"chips down to a resolution of 14.6nm" so does that mean that that whole giant stadium of a microscope can't image at the resolution that ships in chips today? (e.g. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/237781-samsungs-10nm-node-socs-now-in-mass-production https://www.extremetech.com/computing/237781-samsungs-10nm-n... ). please correct me if I've gotten it wrong!

kuschku 9y ago
That’s actually correct. If you want to go further, you’ll need to use Stanford’s Linac (0.15nm) or the just opened European XFEL (0.05nm)