I haven't taken die photos of the Nanoprocessor myself (yet), but it's pretty easy with a chip like that. Since it has a metal lid, it can be opened up in about

I haven't taken die photos of the Nanoprocessor myself (yet), but it's pretty easy with a chip like that. Since it has a metal lid, it can be opened up in about 5 seconds with a chisel; no boiling acids required. The inconvenient part is that you need a metallurgical microscope to get a good view. A metallurgical microscope shines the light down through the lens so you get a clear image under high magnification. You can see interesting stuff with a regular microscope or an inspection scope, but the details are obscured. To make a detailed die photo, I take about 50-100 closeup image and then stitch them together using the Hugin panorama program. This usually takes a couple of hours.