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One thing I've wondered about for a while is optically inspectable self-printed electronics. If you go down the rabbit hole of wondering "how can I ever trust
by zxcmx 7y ago
One thing I've wondered about for a while is optically inspectable self-printed electronics.
If you go down the rabbit hole of wondering "how can I ever trust this computer" far enough this starts looking like a moderately interesting idea.
For this application you might want to just print a kind of simple TPM you could use to bootstrap trust or act as a secure enclave for another system.
This isn't a thing anyone has meaningfully been able to do for open-source systems before, to my knowledge.
- amelius 7y agoInteresting idea, but once you have multiple layers of interconnect, I think the inspection would become difficult.
- Accujack 7y agoNot to mention waste heat.
- MayeulC 7y agoSurely determining which trace is connected to which would be hard at intersections, but: - You can hypothetically print it yourself, scanning each layer separately - I wonder if some design patterns couldn't be used to prove the circuit wouldn't work if a crossing point was shorted or cut - you could have additionnal, easier-to-check verification circuits - if ordering big circuits, it might be possible to order them whole, as well as layer-by-layer. One could verify each layer, measure it, compute the inertia matrix of the whole and verify it matches. If the feature size is big, though, I'd be wary of discrete components that could have been planted there.