My understanding is that while you can reverse engineer something like a new material via trial and effort plus some basic lab analysis of samples.....stuff lik

My understanding is that while you can reverse engineer something like a new material via trial and effort plus some basic lab analysis of samples.....stuff like chips are a PITA to reverse engineer. My understanding is that a major hurdle is just how tiny everything is on modern chiplets. If I remember right....someone managed to reverse engineer the Intel 8086 or the 8080....but my understanding is that our lithography is so complex at this point you can't accurately reverse engineer the physical chip layout. If one could reverse engineer the physical layout and chemical layers...you could probably use that information to reverse engineer the photolithography mask and chemical etching step. TLDR: we can't reverse those modern server CPU's ....we can only learn via what the fan or the chiplet owner be it Intel or and or apple decides to release regarding architecture or chip layout.