3 ms·

Realistically, are these enough to replicate the chips?

• dfox 1y ago
  Mostly no. You do not see the lower layers and for anything sub 1um or so the resolution is too poor anyway.
• pbw 1y ago
  To capture the individual transistors on a modern CPU, you'd need an image tens of terabytes in size, and it'd have to be captured by an electron microscope, not an optical image. And even that wouldn't let you see all the layers. Some of the very old CPUs, I'm not sure what resolution would be required.
• dan_hawkins 1y ago
  Absolutely not. It's like opening a hood of your car, taking picture of what you see and then try to build replica of the engine based on that.
• anyfoo 1y ago
  A few early CPUs (famously including the 6502) were fully reverse engineered through "ordinary" die photos, and they even have gate-level simulators now where you can basically see the individual transistors switching: http://www.visual6502.org http://www.visual6502.org I don't know if that's still near feasible for an 8088 or 8086. Anything past that, almost certainly not. Anything modern, absolutely not.