7 ms·

How to open a microchip and see what’s inside

193 points by Cieplak 8y ago

random878 8y ago
I'm struck by how aesthetically pleasing some of the images are. They remind me of stained glass windows.
- pnutjam 8y ago
  colors are enhanced
  - Junk_Collector 8y ago
    No, that's pretty much what they look like under a microscope.
    - abrugsch 8y ago
      or in regular light... I recently decapped some old chips that were ceramic packages with a soldered on metal cap. A 486 DX2[0] and an old Analog to digital converter IC [1]. the bare silicon was beautiful once exposed..(Pics posted without filters, though huawei's photos are generally more saturated than I normally like) [0]https://www.instagram.com/p/BudTdillc-K/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BudTdillc-K/ [1]https://www.instagram.com/p/BudTG3Ml2ki/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BudTG3Ml2ki/
    - pnutjam 8y ago
      FTA: "Taking a look Images are clickable (beware of 5-25Mb JPEG's). Colors are enhanced, in reality they are much less saturated. "
    - BarsMonster 8y ago
      They are indeed enhanced, but about 2x, not 10x. At the time of the writing I was increasing saturation on all photos a bit in postprocessing. Now I am typically making photographs with RGB illumination which increases saturation optically (without noise), so only contrast/brightness range needs to be tuned. Colors are mainly due to light interference caused by different glass thickness over the chip area. Source: I am the author.
k__ 8y ago
When I was young, a friend of mine sawed a chip in two for this. It was rather old and had small golden wires everywhere that connected stuff, they made it look like some ancient tech.
- abrugsch 8y ago
  You might like the pics I posted in the sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513860
saagarjha 8y ago
As an aside, I find chips that have been covered in epoxy really annoying. Not only are they really difficult to remove, but even before that they don’t have the typical markings on their casings that serve to identify them and tell you whether they’re interesting to pursue…
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
kevin2r 8y ago
I always liked the physical side of electronics as contrary as computer programming where is all virtual nowadays. What would be the career path for a job in chip design and manufacturing?
- q3k 8y ago
  > What would be the career path for a job in chip design and manufacturing? Study EE, and if you want to stand out - concentrate on formal verification methods for HDL verification.
  - sannee 8y ago
    Is EE actually the correct field to study for formal verification? I have been looking into this at one point and it seemed very much within the realm of computer scientists. For instance, our EE study program does not include even basic computability theory, the formal logic/graph theory was pretty minimal and besides some K-maps also zero boolean function theory. This compared with the CS program that contains multiple very in-depth courses exactly on those topics which seem pretty critical for formal verification of hardware.
    - q3k 8y ago
      The EE degree is only there to make you employable as an EE. You'll have to teach yourself formal methods on your own. That's why it's a way to stand out.
      - krastanov 8y ago
        "You have to teach yourself on your own" is always a good idea, but it would be an immense waste of time not to use the classes that your educational institution provides. Double majoring exists specifically for this purpose.
    - moftz 8y ago
      You could go the computer engineering route. It's a nice combination of EE and CS classes that will give you electrical theory experience that a CS major will not get and more experience with digital/software design than an EE will get. Not every university offers it. There is usually a large focus on writing C and Verilog/VHDL in the higher up classes. If you can't pursue a computer engineering degree at your school, an EE degree with a heavy focus on digital design will get you close. If can, try to get approval to take CS classes to expose you to more FPGA things if your CS path does that. There are a bunch of free online MIT classes for this kind of stuff. One thing to help, go out and buy a cheap Xilinx or Altera FPGA to start messing around with stuff on your own. Learn how to write fast assembly for MIPS or 8051 and fast C for RISC-V or ARM processors.
molticrystal 8y ago
I always loved the easter eggs and art that some chips have included on the circuits, most of which has never been seen and will never be seen by anybody but the designers. Here are some examples: http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/chipfun/graff.htm http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/chipfun/graff.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_art My favorite has always been Wally/Waldo from Where's Wally.
- akoster 8y ago
  Great links! Reminds of this [0] instance in the wild of using chip art to send a message to those attempting to decap and reverse engineer a design. [0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42255/was-there-cyrillic-text-visible-on-intel-386-chips-after-decapping https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42255/was-there...
  - escherplex 8y ago
    Which reminds me of a story from a retired Bell Labs, Murray Hill engineer who related how they would add useless circuits to microprocessors to see if these sections were duplicated or deleted by the old Soviet military engineers. They were duplicated.
adambowles 8y ago
Applied Science YouTube channel did a video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT1FStxAVz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT1FStxAVz4
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pkaye 8y ago
I used to do this as part of R&D efforts at my employer 15 years back. It was pretty dirt cheap to get someone to decap a package like this. You could also get them to put under an electron(x-ray?) microscope and fly around the chip like an airplane simulation. Then they would use something called FIB to cut and draw wires to test out bug fixes. Usually the designers would keep a couple unused gates at periodic intervals to borrow for fixes.
flippyhead 8y ago
These would make really cool art pieces on their own.
parliament32 8y ago
These are very cool.. The layout and traces remind me of a well designed factory in Factorio.
new299 8y ago
While sulfuric or nitric acid is the best way to do this, you can also decap using a box cutter and some patience. I recently did this to figure out if an opamp I bought was fake: http://41j.com/blog/2019/03/various-op177-die-images/ http://41j.com/blog/2019/03/various-op177-die-images/ I’ve posted some better images here: https://twitter.com/new299/status/1111301269988106245?s=21 https://twitter.com/new299/status/1111301269988106245?s=21 I’m going to try and get setup to decap properly. But the for those more concerned about using the required acids, a box cutter can give some insight into what’s going on in many devices...
- bacon_waffle 8y ago
  We occasionally used a regular old propane torch at a previous employer, mainly looking for counterfeit power FETs. It'll burn the bond wires and such off an IC, and certainly isn't going to result in great quality images but it's not too hard to get rid of the plastic without damaging the silicon beyond recognition.
edoo 8y ago
Very interesting technique. I remember when they would reverse engineer chips by grinding them down while taking nice pictures of each layer for the engineers to interpret later.
- westbywest 8y ago
  At a prior job last decade involving FCBGA packaging design for the company's ASIC, and I witnessed exactly this to debug ESD problems, etc. That is, prototype dice failing test would be ground down until a black spot was found. Very expensive design cycles, so lots of incentive to extensively model such issues before fab.
La-ang 8y ago
I'm gonna print this and hang it on the wall :D Circuit Art I'd call it..
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
cogburnd02 8y ago
There's some more here: https://siliconpr0n.org/wiki/doku.php?id=decap:start https://siliconpr0n.org/wiki/doku.php?id=decap:start If we can digitize the entire netlist (schematic of transistors) from the 6502 processor by analyzing this type of photograph, why hasn't someone started analyzing the crappy wifi chips that people who don't run Trisquel use--the kind that require proprietary drivers to work correctly, in order to write free drivers for them? https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/ https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/lin...
- detaro 8y ago
  A modern wifi chip is made with a lot smaller processes and multiple orders of magnitude more complex.

193 points by Cieplak 8y ago

random878 8y ago

I'm struck by how aesthetically pleasing some of the images are. They remind me of stained glass windows.

pnutjam 8y ago
colors are enhanced
- Junk_Collector 8y ago
  No, that's pretty much what they look like under a microscope.
  - abrugsch 8y ago
    or in regular light... I recently decapped some old chips that were ceramic packages with a soldered on metal cap. A 486 DX2[0] and an old Analog to digital converter IC [1]. the bare silicon was beautiful once exposed..(Pics posted without filters, though huawei's photos are generally more saturated than I normally like) [0]https://www.instagram.com/p/BudTdillc-K/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BudTdillc-K/ [1]https://www.instagram.com/p/BudTG3Ml2ki/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BudTG3Ml2ki/
  - pnutjam 8y ago
    FTA: "Taking a look Images are clickable (beware of 5-25Mb JPEG's). Colors are enhanced, in reality they are much less saturated. "
  - BarsMonster 8y ago
    They are indeed enhanced, but about 2x, not 10x. At the time of the writing I was increasing saturation on all photos a bit in postprocessing. Now I am typically making photographs with RGB illumination which increases saturation optically (without noise), so only contrast/brightness range needs to be tuned. Colors are mainly due to light interference caused by different glass thickness over the chip area. Source: I am the author.

k__ 8y ago

When I was young, a friend of mine sawed a chip in two for this. It was rather old and had small golden wires everywhere that connected stuff, they made it look like some ancient tech.

abrugsch 8y ago
You might like the pics I posted in the sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513860

saagarjha 8y ago

As an aside, I find chips that have been covered in epoxy really annoying. Not only are they really difficult to remove, but even before that they don’t have the typical markings on their casings that serve to identify them and tell you whether they’re interesting to pursue…

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

kevin2r 8y ago

I always liked the physical side of electronics as contrary as computer programming where is all virtual nowadays. What would be the career path for a job in chip design and manufacturing?

q3k 8y ago
> What would be the career path for a job in chip design and manufacturing? Study EE, and if you want to stand out - concentrate on formal verification methods for HDL verification.
- sannee 8y ago
  Is EE actually the correct field to study for formal verification? I have been looking into this at one point and it seemed very much within the realm of computer scientists. For instance, our EE study program does not include even basic computability theory, the formal logic/graph theory was pretty minimal and besides some K-maps also zero boolean function theory. This compared with the CS program that contains multiple very in-depth courses exactly on those topics which seem pretty critical for formal verification of hardware.
  - q3k 8y ago
    The EE degree is only there to make you employable as an EE. You'll have to teach yourself formal methods on your own. That's why it's a way to stand out.
    - krastanov 8y ago
      "You have to teach yourself on your own" is always a good idea, but it would be an immense waste of time not to use the classes that your educational institution provides. Double majoring exists specifically for this purpose.
  - moftz 8y ago
    You could go the computer engineering route. It's a nice combination of EE and CS classes that will give you electrical theory experience that a CS major will not get and more experience with digital/software design than an EE will get. Not every university offers it. There is usually a large focus on writing C and Verilog/VHDL in the higher up classes. If you can't pursue a computer engineering degree at your school, an EE degree with a heavy focus on digital design will get you close. If can, try to get approval to take CS classes to expose you to more FPGA things if your CS path does that. There are a bunch of free online MIT classes for this kind of stuff. One thing to help, go out and buy a cheap Xilinx or Altera FPGA to start messing around with stuff on your own. Learn how to write fast assembly for MIPS or 8051 and fast C for RISC-V or ARM processors.

molticrystal 8y ago

I always loved the easter eggs and art that some chips have included on the circuits, most of which has never been seen and will never be seen by anybody but the designers. Here are some examples: http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/chipfun/graff.htm http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/chipfun/graff.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_art My favorite has always been Wally/Waldo from Where's Wally.

akoster 8y ago
Great links! Reminds of this [0] instance in the wild of using chip art to send a message to those attempting to decap and reverse engineer a design. [0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42255/was-there-cyrillic-text-visible-on-intel-386-chips-after-decapping https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42255/was-there...
- escherplex 8y ago
  Which reminds me of a story from a retired Bell Labs, Murray Hill engineer who related how they would add useless circuits to microprocessors to see if these sections were duplicated or deleted by the old Soviet military engineers. They were duplicated.

adambowles 8y ago

Applied Science YouTube channel did a video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT1FStxAVz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT1FStxAVz4

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pkaye 8y ago

I used to do this as part of R&D efforts at my employer 15 years back. It was pretty dirt cheap to get someone to decap a package like this. You could also get them to put under an electron(x-ray?) microscope and fly around the chip like an airplane simulation. Then they would use something called FIB to cut and draw wires to test out bug fixes. Usually the designers would keep a couple unused gates at periodic intervals to borrow for fixes.

flippyhead 8y ago

These would make really cool art pieces on their own.

parliament32 8y ago

These are very cool.. The layout and traces remind me of a well designed factory in Factorio.

new299 8y ago

While sulfuric or nitric acid is the best way to do this, you can also decap using a box cutter and some patience. I recently did this to figure out if an opamp I bought was fake: http://41j.com/blog/2019/03/various-op177-die-images/ http://41j.com/blog/2019/03/various-op177-die-images/ I’ve posted some better images here: https://twitter.com/new299/status/1111301269988106245?s=21 https://twitter.com/new299/status/1111301269988106245?s=21 I’m going to try and get setup to decap properly. But the for those more concerned about using the required acids, a box cutter can give some insight into what’s going on in many devices...

bacon_waffle 8y ago
We occasionally used a regular old propane torch at a previous employer, mainly looking for counterfeit power FETs. It'll burn the bond wires and such off an IC, and certainly isn't going to result in great quality images but it's not too hard to get rid of the plastic without damaging the silicon beyond recognition.

edoo 8y ago

Very interesting technique. I remember when they would reverse engineer chips by grinding them down while taking nice pictures of each layer for the engineers to interpret later.

westbywest 8y ago
At a prior job last decade involving FCBGA packaging design for the company's ASIC, and I witnessed exactly this to debug ESD problems, etc. That is, prototype dice failing test would be ground down until a black spot was found. Very expensive design cycles, so lots of incentive to extensively model such issues before fab.

La-ang 8y ago

I'm gonna print this and hang it on the wall :D Circuit Art I'd call it..

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

cogburnd02 8y ago

There's some more here: https://siliconpr0n.org/wiki/doku.php?id=decap:start https://siliconpr0n.org/wiki/doku.php?id=decap:start If we can digitize the entire netlist (schematic of transistors) from the 6502 processor by analyzing this type of photograph, why hasn't someone started analyzing the crappy wifi chips that people who don't run Trisquel use--the kind that require proprietary drivers to work correctly, in order to write free drivers for them? https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/ https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/lin...

detaro 8y ago
A modern wifi chip is made with a lot smaller processes and multiple orders of magnitude more complex.