3 ms·
The limit for me is the early 1980s. After that, the feature sizes get too small for my microscope. (Red light has a wavelength of 700nm, so things start to get
by kens 6y ago
The limit for me is the early 1980s. After that, the feature sizes get too small for my microscope. (Red light has a wavelength of 700nm, so things start to get difficult below about 1 micrometer.) And when chips have two or more layers of metal, it is much harder to follow the wiring.
Companies that do chip analysis commercially, and have tools such as electron microscopes, can process much more complex chips. The limit for them is probably how much you're willing to pay.
- Koshkin 6y agoThere was an interesting post here on HN recently about a home-built STM. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740968
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoChristopher Tarnovsky has given a few DEF CON and BlackHat talks (eg [1]) where he describes reverse-engineering Trusted Platform Module(TPM) and smartcard chips. It's a good demo on the capabilities of the sort of thing where companies are limited only by the time they can afford to take. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed_9p7E4jIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed_9p7E4jIE