So? We know how chips work, we make them! Going from a picture is much easier, you know exactly what you are looking at. Not just the individual structures, but

So? We know how chips work, we make them! Going from a picture is much easier, you know exactly what you are looking at. Not just the individual structures, but we also already know what kind of higher level structure to expect. There is nothing unknown about what we see on a chip, by definition (we could not have made it in the first place).