5 ms·

Is there something like an Extract-SPICE tool that takes a circuit and gives you back a text rendering of it ?

by whitten 2mo ago

Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
Practically No, the stack-up of metal layers often hides the gate structures underneath, and the billions of process cells may not all be the same. Theoretically Yes, as an ion-beam-mill and electron-microscope combination machine can slice up semiconductors layer-by-layer. Given these machines can often also give precise x-ray analysis material data, the exact makeup of the chip can be extracted by competitors given enough time. =3
- saltcured 2mo ago
  Now you're making me imagine some kind of 3D-scanning, confocal x-ray fluorescent spectroscope. Or maybe some kind of hybrid of x-ray microtomography and spectroscopic analysis all in one. But, maybe the energies involved would be about the same destructive power as some microtome slicing technique...
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    We already know that X-rays don't destroy chips.
    - bofadeez 2mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
        I’d recommend the Chenming-Hu books on solar cells and semis available as pdfs on his site. https://www.chu.berkeley.edu/modern-semiconductor-devices-for-integrated-circuits-chenming-calvin-hu-2010/ https://www.chu.berkeley.edu/modern-semiconductor-devices-fo... LLMs have already been shown to cause cognitive/skill performance losses in some users. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axOcn--n_lM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axOcn--n_lM
        inigyou 2mo ago
        You're replying to a probably now shadowbanned LLM bot that advertises Fable all day
        bofadeez 2mo ago
        Are these "shadow bans" in the room with you right now? What a nut. Fable needs no advertising. It was more important than the printing press. Code singularity. But it's old news, Fable is no longer my favorite LLM. I mostly use Kimi k3 now. It's also more competent than you are in general. The primary point you're avoiding is that programming is not a job for professional humans anymore. At least not humans with any dignity or self respect or economic value. I'm sure you at least agree with this point, like every other reasonable person does now too.
        perching_aix 2mo ago
        > LLMs have already been shown to cause cognitive/skill performance losses in some users. =3 Sorry to interrupt your smugness, but have you actually read that study? It's basically tautological: people remained mostly unfamiliar with code they did not write, and remained mostly unfamiliar with a library they did not use. That's kind of the whole point to begin with! https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rni/papers/realprg.html https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rni/papers/realprg.html Unless you want to argue that anyone who cannot code is brain damaged, I'd say it's a bit difficult to suggest that this would amount to any kind of clinically relevant cognitive impairment, much to the contrary of the masses desperately hoping and asserting so. Losing a skill you don't use / want / need is very normal cognitive function.
        Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
        Quod erat demonstrandum =3
        perching_aix 2mo ago
        I genuinely wish you were at least half as smart as you think you are, cause then you wouldn't be acting obnoxiously like this, willfully betraying your own values. It'd be generally awesome if the last bastions of humanity actually demonstrated any of the values they're championing so hard at all.
    - saltcured 2mo ago
      I was thinking of the kind of high-energy photon sources that sprawl across a large laboratory campus behind rings of security fences. These things can definitely erode the targets. Tomography experiments have to think carefully to optimize the set exposure angles used during a session, because the target degrades more with each shot.
- duskwuff 2mo ago
  > Theoretically Yes, as an ion-beam-mill and electron-microscope combination machine can slice up semiconductors layer-by-layer. You may not even need anything as fancy as that - many microchips can be delayered by a skilled operator using mechanical polishing processes.
kayson 2mo ago
Yes. There is exactly that, and we call it an "extraction" tool. It takes a GDS (text representation of shapes in the physical layout), and gives you back a "netlist" (text representation of components and connections in a circuit schematic). Circuit designers use these tools basically daily for two reasons - the first is Layout Versus Schematic. We want to make sure that the physical layout matches the schematic, so the tool turns the layout GDS into a netlist and compares that to the netlist created from the schematic (basically a diff, but more complicated). The second is so we can run simulations that take into account the "parasitic" resistances and capacitances of the wires and metal shapes in the physical layout. It's basically the same procedure as LVS with an extra step that analyzes the metal shapes to determine said R's and C's.
- Taniwha 2mo ago
  yes, but at the transistor level .... it has no idea at that level how those transistors are arranged into gates directly
  - Taniwha 2mo ago
    I take it back, it's a sky130 .gds the gates are explicitly in there
  - Taniwha 2mo ago
    In fact if you have the sky130 libraries installed (it's where I'm working) you can get a spice netlist out of it in about 10 seconds - really they should have flattened it
    - smprather 2mo ago
      That would have added a definite layer of complexity, but really just a token/cpu drain on the puzzle solver. Had they done that, I would have had Claude write a "gds matcher" that took the gds files of the sky std-cell lib, and located matches in the full gds, and produced a hierarchical def. It would have taken me 5 minutes to describe it to Claude/GPT (which they ok'd for "tool creation"). So it adds a lot of cost to solve the puzzle, but no real complexity. I'm glad they didn't flatten it.

Is there something like an Extract-SPICE tool that takes a circuit and gives you back a text rendering of it ?

by whitten 2mo ago

Is there something like an Extract-SPICE tool that takes a circuit and gives you back a text rendering of it ?

Practically No, the stack-up of metal layers often hides the gate structures underneath, and the billions of process cells may not all be the same. Theoretically Yes, as an ion-beam-mill and electron-microscope combination machine can slice up semiconductors layer-by-layer. Given these machines can often also give precise x-ray analysis material data, the exact makeup of the chip can be extracted by competitors given enough time. =3

saltcured 2mo ago
Now you're making me imagine some kind of 3D-scanning, confocal x-ray fluorescent spectroscope. Or maybe some kind of hybrid of x-ray microtomography and spectroscopic analysis all in one. But, maybe the energies involved would be about the same destructive power as some microtome slicing technique...
- inigyou 2mo ago
  We already know that X-rays don't destroy chips.
  - bofadeez 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
      I’d recommend the Chenming-Hu books on solar cells and semis available as pdfs on his site. https://www.chu.berkeley.edu/modern-semiconductor-devices-for-integrated-circuits-chenming-calvin-hu-2010/ https://www.chu.berkeley.edu/modern-semiconductor-devices-fo... LLMs have already been shown to cause cognitive/skill performance losses in some users. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axOcn--n_lM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axOcn--n_lM
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        You're replying to a probably now shadowbanned LLM bot that advertises Fable all day
        bofadeez 2mo ago
        Are these "shadow bans" in the room with you right now? What a nut. Fable needs no advertising. It was more important than the printing press. Code singularity. But it's old news, Fable is no longer my favorite LLM. I mostly use Kimi k3 now. It's also more competent than you are in general. The primary point you're avoiding is that programming is not a job for professional humans anymore. At least not humans with any dignity or self respect or economic value. I'm sure you at least agree with this point, like every other reasonable person does now too.
      - perching_aix 2mo ago
        > LLMs have already been shown to cause cognitive/skill performance losses in some users. =3 Sorry to interrupt your smugness, but have you actually read that study? It's basically tautological: people remained mostly unfamiliar with code they did not write, and remained mostly unfamiliar with a library they did not use. That's kind of the whole point to begin with! https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rni/papers/realprg.html https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rni/papers/realprg.html Unless you want to argue that anyone who cannot code is brain damaged, I'd say it's a bit difficult to suggest that this would amount to any kind of clinically relevant cognitive impairment, much to the contrary of the masses desperately hoping and asserting so. Losing a skill you don't use / want / need is very normal cognitive function.
        Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
        Quod erat demonstrandum =3
        perching_aix 2mo ago
        I genuinely wish you were at least half as smart as you think you are, cause then you wouldn't be acting obnoxiously like this, willfully betraying your own values. It'd be generally awesome if the last bastions of humanity actually demonstrated any of the values they're championing so hard at all.
  - saltcured 2mo ago
    I was thinking of the kind of high-energy photon sources that sprawl across a large laboratory campus behind rings of security fences. These things can definitely erode the targets. Tomography experiments have to think carefully to optimize the set exposure angles used during a session, because the target degrades more with each shot.
duskwuff 2mo ago
> Theoretically Yes, as an ion-beam-mill and electron-microscope combination machine can slice up semiconductors layer-by-layer. You may not even need anything as fancy as that - many microchips can be delayered by a skilled operator using mechanical polishing processes.

kayson 2mo ago

Yes. There is exactly that, and we call it an "extraction" tool. It takes a GDS (text representation of shapes in the physical layout), and gives you back a "netlist" (text representation of components and connections in a circuit schematic). Circuit designers use these tools basically daily for two reasons - the first is Layout Versus Schematic. We want to make sure that the physical layout matches the schematic, so the tool turns the layout GDS into a netlist and compares that to the netlist created from the schematic (basically a diff, but more complicated). The second is so we can run simulations that take into account the "parasitic" resistances and capacitances of the wires and metal shapes in the physical layout. It's basically the same procedure as LVS with an extra step that analyzes the metal shapes to determine said R's and C's.

Taniwha 2mo ago
yes, but at the transistor level .... it has no idea at that level how those transistors are arranged into gates directly
- Taniwha 2mo ago
  I take it back, it's a sky130 .gds the gates are explicitly in there
- Taniwha 2mo ago
  In fact if you have the sky130 libraries installed (it's where I'm working) you can get a spice netlist out of it in about 10 seconds - really they should have flattened it
  - smprather 2mo ago
    That would have added a definite layer of complexity, but really just a token/cpu drain on the puzzle solver. Had they done that, I would have had Claude write a "gds matcher" that took the gds files of the sky std-cell lib, and located matches in the full gds, and produced a hierarchical def. It would have taken me 5 minutes to describe it to Claude/GPT (which they ok'd for "tool creation"). So it adds a lot of cost to solve the puzzle, but no real complexity. I'm glad they didn't flatten it.