There are companies that specialize in reverse engineering schematics from silicon. It's entirely possible (albeit relatively expensive and time-consuming compa

There are companies that specialize in reverse engineering schematics from silicon. It's entirely possible (albeit relatively expensive and time-consuming compared to good old-fashioned industrial espionage) to recover schematics from silicon. Have a look at this video from ChipWorks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il5sTZKBLO0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il5sTZKBLO0 See the schematics? They've created those from scratch by deconstructing the chip. (I can say with certainty that this is the case because I'm familiar with the original schematics for this part. The ChipWorks ones are much neater!) Doing this for a larger, all-digital chip is substantially the same. In that case you can probably step up from identifying individual transistors and identify the standard cells directly, since they tend to have distinctive-looking gate structures.