9 ms·

Fund high-resolution 80386 and 80486 series top metal photos

69 points by lelf 12y ago

VLM 12y ago
This page fires me up about this project: http://www.visual6502.org/wiki/index.php?title=6502_-_simulating_in_real_time_on_an_FPGA http://www.visual6502.org/wiki/index.php?title=6502_-_simula... For either educational purposes or SoC experiments it fires me up to think of a transistor level FPGA version of a '386, eventually. This kind of thing is the eventual long term application of this guys project, aside from abstract art. (I'm in "submitting too fast" punishment mode, so this edit is a reply to theatrus2: Yes you are correct and inspired by the 6502 project, Peter Monta wrote a GPL utility that converts from transistor netlists to Verilog (or was it VHDL?). You can probably find it on SF or github. As far as I know its in a working state, not just vaporware or something. So its also a cool project in that it inspires interesting software development.)
- theatrus2 12y ago
  FPGAs cannot model a transistor level design - you would need to replicate the mask set for that.
ctdonath 12y ago
Intel used to release good-sized posters of those chips (I might have one) with enough detail to sorta make out transistors. I lamented later chips as they were so complex the details all blurred into a metallic grey, even at poster sizes.
- xanderstrike 12y ago
  Why you can't drop 20-50 bucks to get a poster as a reward in this campaign is beyond me. It seems like such an obvious incentive.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - georgemcbay 12y ago
    Yeah the entire reward structure seem kind of nonsensical to me, basically a single person has to donate the entire cost behind an imaging, even if the result is a CC-licensed image; and then you have the upper-tier where someone can own the copyright over an image; ignoring the fact that if someone pays for that for some chip on the list and someone else pays for the CC-image of the same chip the image you own copyright to will be essentially the same as the one that is placed into the CC, even if he goes through the entire imaging process multiple times (which seems like a waste of time, but would technically skirt the licensing clash produced). Would make a lot more sense, IMO, if it went with a more pooled approach where smaller donations got, as you mentioned, a poster, perhaps with tiers based on presentation (just a poster in a tube, framed poster for more money, etc), dropping things all the way down to say $1-5 to get just a high-res image suitable to use as a desktop background (I realize that anything released under the CC from this could be used this way anyway (and you can donate less than $75); but the point is making an option for people who would like to throw a few bucks his way because the project is cool, but aren't interested in dropping $75-400 on it, but would also like to feel like they are getting "something" out of it, even if just a digital image.
- mrbill 12y ago
  I had one of the '386 posters on my wall in college and a couple years afterwards until it got damaged in a move.
pera 12y ago
It wouldn't surprise me to see in the future fundraisings like this for security purposes. btw does anyone knows if this is considered reverse engineering by law?
- pjc50 12y ago
  At this stage it's just photography; producing your own ICs from this would probably run a risk of patent infringement. There is a sui generis right in IC mask designs, but it's limited to 10 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_design_protection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_desig...
  - pera 12y ago
    iirc in some countries using a disassembler is considered RE, so I'm curious if something similar happens with IC's
  - stonemetal 12y ago
    The longest a patent in the US can last is 20 years. According to Wikipedia the 386 was released in 1985, and '89 for the 486. Therefore any patents should have expired by now unless they applied for the patents years after release of the related product.
- chrisBob 12y ago
  This is all about metal side imaging. The exciting part happens behind the metal, and requires you to image through a thinned wafer to see the actual transistors. IARPA has recently funded a good amount of research into this, so I am sure someone thinks this is an interesting security issue.
GotAnyMegadeth 12y ago
I think there should be some more perks at a wider range of values. There could be a $20 photo print of one of the photos or something.
chucknelson 12y ago
This title is way too vague. I know the domain clues you in a bit, but at first glance I was hoping for some nostalgic writing about the 386 and 486 architectures.
natch 12y ago
I think these chip layouts are already copyrighted. Sure photos have their own copyrights but you are probably infringing by producing and selling the "copyright" to these. IANAL. Aside from that, if all you are providing is digital images of them, and the incremental cost of emailing out an image link to a funder is $0, why be stingy with what funders get? To me this looks like nothing more than a "please fund my hobby" campaign, which I will not support.
- pjc50 12y ago
  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_design_protection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_desig... : masks are not considered creative works and therefore have their own special, short rules on protection. The copyright of a photograph of the chip belongs with the person who took the photograph, as normal.
joezydeco 12y ago
John McMaster does some amazing stuff. Here's an example of how he took a section of a chip (Williams Special Chip 1, a blitter device used in a lot of video games) and reversed it back down to a pair of gates: http://uvicrec.blogspot.com/2013/03/williams-special-chip-1-sc1.html http://uvicrec.blogspot.com/2013/03/williams-special-chip-1-...
- coldpie 12y ago
  In a similar vein, here's a silicon-level reverse engineering of the overflow bit logic on the 6502. Fascinating stuff. http://www.righto.com/2013/01/a-small-part-of-6502-chip-explained.html http://www.righto.com/2013/01/a-small-part-of-6502-chip-expl... Side note: these two pages use very similar diagram colors. I wonder if there's a common source (textbook?) that both authors read that used those colors.
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    I believe those colors are pretty standard nomenclature for the VLSI layout world. http://www.eet.bme.hu/~benedek/Vlsi_Design/Lectures/CMOS_Layout.pdf http://www.eet.bme.hu/~benedek/Vlsi_Design/Lectures/CMOS_Lay... has a color table that seems to match up.
acheron 12y ago
"For most people it started with the 80386 because it allowed running Windows and helped lead to the rise of the Internet." whaaat. A) In a vague, popular sense, the x86 series "started" with the 8088 and the IBM PC, obviously. B) The 386 was contemporary with Windows 2.0 which was hardly popular. It was really used for Windows 3.0 which was a bit better. But the first majorly popular Windows release was 3.1, which was contemporary with the 486 (though it could run on 386s too). C) The number of Windows 3.x users with direct Internet connections was awfully low. At that point everyone doing consumer-facing networking was on AOL and similar services. Associating "Windows" and the "rise of the Internet" gets you to at least Windows 95, which was a Pentium-era product. I guess that intro statement doesn't really matter to the project, which does seem kind of cool, but it's also the first thing you read going to the page.
- matthewmcg 12y ago
  Didn't the '386 also inspire the creation of Linux?
  - kyberias 12y ago
    Yes, and I think much more than Windows.
  - chubot 12y ago
    Yup, also 386BSD. According to their website, Linus actually had some code in there in the early days, which is interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD
  - michaelmike 12y ago
    Inspire is not quite the word I would use, I think. The reason so much was done on the 386 is because Intel finally dropped that god-awful segmented addressing in favor of a flat memory model. In addition, protected mode became actually useful and was necessary for a Unix-like OS to be created (where you have multitasking and protected sections of RAM). Doom was also a killer-app for the 386.
csbrooks 12y ago
Some placeholder text got left in: "Remember, keep it concise, yet personal. Ask yourself: if someone stopped reading here would they be ready to make a contribution?"
- illumen 12y ago
  Does not give me confidence in the review process at indiegogo. Edit: ah.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    While this is indiegogo, Kisckstarter recently removed their review process entirely.
peterhajas 12y ago
John and I met during our undergrad education at RPI. There was a small but passionate group of students passionate about IC photography.
phkahler 12y ago
I always liked the 68000 and wished IBM had chosen it instead. It was a real 32bit chip and I still have an instruction set book for it dated 1979.
petercooper 12y ago
Is there a delay on Indiegogo or has a fundraiser that's interesting enough to hit HN front page for an hour only managed to attract a single $5 pledge in that time? (Which strikes me as odd given it's getting voted up.)
codingdave 12y ago
I think this sounds like a decent project. But I do wonder about the funding goal. It sounds like the equipment is already purchased. Asking other people to "recoup" his costs for equipment that he already owns and uses in his hobbies seems a bit unfair. Likewise, with vague funding goals like enabling research and funding equipment upgrades... and the fact that he is matching the price a commercial outfit would charge to do this... I just get the sense that we aren't being asked to fund a project as much as the public is being asked to become a paying client for a professional service. Not that the service sounds bad - the results would be cool. I'd just like to know what the actual project costs will be, and have the goal match that. Anything above and beyond that goal, of course, he should feel free to use to recoup costs and upgrade.
jondtaylor 12y ago
I noticed this in the blurb: "Remember, keep it concise, yet personal. Ask yourself: if someone stopped reading here would they be ready to make a contribution?"
roghummal 12y ago
It sucks that http://siliconpr0n.org http://siliconpr0n.org has burst into flames. People would probably be more excited about this if they could check it out. Similarly, you could check out the Silicon Zoo (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/ http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/). Very cool stuff!
terminus 12y ago
I have been fascinated with chip diagrams like these for a long time: http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2012_04_19_Ivy_Bridges_GPU_2-25_times_Sandys.html http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2012_04_19_Ivy_Bridges_GP... http://chip-architect.com/news/2003_09_21_Detailed_Architecture_of_AMDs_64bit_Core.html http://chip-architect.com/news/2003_09_21_Detailed_Architect... Of course the ones he's planning to photograph are older generation ones but worthy nonetheless. Would be interesting to map structures on the metal mask to chip level structures but that's for later.

69 points by lelf 12y ago

VLM 12y ago

This page fires me up about this project: http://www.visual6502.org/wiki/index.php?title=6502_-_simulating_in_real_time_on_an_FPGA http://www.visual6502.org/wiki/index.php?title=6502_-_simula... For either educational purposes or SoC experiments it fires me up to think of a transistor level FPGA version of a '386, eventually. This kind of thing is the eventual long term application of this guys project, aside from abstract art. (I'm in "submitting too fast" punishment mode, so this edit is a reply to theatrus2: Yes you are correct and inspired by the 6502 project, Peter Monta wrote a GPL utility that converts from transistor netlists to Verilog (or was it VHDL?). You can probably find it on SF or github. As far as I know its in a working state, not just vaporware or something. So its also a cool project in that it inspires interesting software development.)

theatrus2 12y ago
FPGAs cannot model a transistor level design - you would need to replicate the mask set for that.

ctdonath 12y ago

Intel used to release good-sized posters of those chips (I might have one) with enough detail to sorta make out transistors. I lamented later chips as they were so complex the details all blurred into a metallic grey, even at poster sizes.

xanderstrike 12y ago
Why you can't drop 20-50 bucks to get a poster as a reward in this campaign is beyond me. It seems like such an obvious incentive.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- georgemcbay 12y ago
  Yeah the entire reward structure seem kind of nonsensical to me, basically a single person has to donate the entire cost behind an imaging, even if the result is a CC-licensed image; and then you have the upper-tier where someone can own the copyright over an image; ignoring the fact that if someone pays for that for some chip on the list and someone else pays for the CC-image of the same chip the image you own copyright to will be essentially the same as the one that is placed into the CC, even if he goes through the entire imaging process multiple times (which seems like a waste of time, but would technically skirt the licensing clash produced). Would make a lot more sense, IMO, if it went with a more pooled approach where smaller donations got, as you mentioned, a poster, perhaps with tiers based on presentation (just a poster in a tube, framed poster for more money, etc), dropping things all the way down to say $1-5 to get just a high-res image suitable to use as a desktop background (I realize that anything released under the CC from this could be used this way anyway (and you can donate less than $75); but the point is making an option for people who would like to throw a few bucks his way because the project is cool, but aren't interested in dropping $75-400 on it, but would also like to feel like they are getting "something" out of it, even if just a digital image.
mrbill 12y ago
I had one of the '386 posters on my wall in college and a couple years afterwards until it got damaged in a move.

pera 12y ago

It wouldn't surprise me to see in the future fundraisings like this for security purposes. btw does anyone knows if this is considered reverse engineering by law?

pjc50 12y ago
At this stage it's just photography; producing your own ICs from this would probably run a risk of patent infringement. There is a sui generis right in IC mask designs, but it's limited to 10 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_design_protection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_desig...
- pera 12y ago
  iirc in some countries using a disassembler is considered RE, so I'm curious if something similar happens with IC's
- stonemetal 12y ago
  The longest a patent in the US can last is 20 years. According to Wikipedia the 386 was released in 1985, and '89 for the 486. Therefore any patents should have expired by now unless they applied for the patents years after release of the related product.
chrisBob 12y ago
This is all about metal side imaging. The exciting part happens behind the metal, and requires you to image through a thinned wafer to see the actual transistors. IARPA has recently funded a good amount of research into this, so I am sure someone thinks this is an interesting security issue.

GotAnyMegadeth 12y ago

I think there should be some more perks at a wider range of values. There could be a $20 photo print of one of the photos or something.

chucknelson 12y ago

This title is way too vague. I know the domain clues you in a bit, but at first glance I was hoping for some nostalgic writing about the 386 and 486 architectures.

natch 12y ago

I think these chip layouts are already copyrighted. Sure photos have their own copyrights but you are probably infringing by producing and selling the "copyright" to these. IANAL. Aside from that, if all you are providing is digital images of them, and the incremental cost of emailing out an image link to a funder is $0, why be stingy with what funders get? To me this looks like nothing more than a "please fund my hobby" campaign, which I will not support.

pjc50 12y ago
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_design_protection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit_layout_desig... : masks are not considered creative works and therefore have their own special, short rules on protection. The copyright of a photograph of the chip belongs with the person who took the photograph, as normal.

joezydeco 12y ago

John McMaster does some amazing stuff. Here's an example of how he took a section of a chip (Williams Special Chip 1, a blitter device used in a lot of video games) and reversed it back down to a pair of gates: http://uvicrec.blogspot.com/2013/03/williams-special-chip-1-sc1.html http://uvicrec.blogspot.com/2013/03/williams-special-chip-1-...

coldpie 12y ago
In a similar vein, here's a silicon-level reverse engineering of the overflow bit logic on the 6502. Fascinating stuff. http://www.righto.com/2013/01/a-small-part-of-6502-chip-explained.html http://www.righto.com/2013/01/a-small-part-of-6502-chip-expl... Side note: these two pages use very similar diagram colors. I wonder if there's a common source (textbook?) that both authors read that used those colors.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  I believe those colors are pretty standard nomenclature for the VLSI layout world. http://www.eet.bme.hu/~benedek/Vlsi_Design/Lectures/CMOS_Layout.pdf http://www.eet.bme.hu/~benedek/Vlsi_Design/Lectures/CMOS_Lay... has a color table that seems to match up.

acheron 12y ago

"For most people it started with the 80386 because it allowed running Windows and helped lead to the rise of the Internet." whaaat. A) In a vague, popular sense, the x86 series "started" with the 8088 and the IBM PC, obviously. B) The 386 was contemporary with Windows 2.0 which was hardly popular. It was really used for Windows 3.0 which was a bit better. But the first majorly popular Windows release was 3.1, which was contemporary with the 486 (though it could run on 386s too). C) The number of Windows 3.x users with direct Internet connections was awfully low. At that point everyone doing consumer-facing networking was on AOL and similar services. Associating "Windows" and the "rise of the Internet" gets you to at least Windows 95, which was a Pentium-era product. I guess that intro statement doesn't really matter to the project, which does seem kind of cool, but it's also the first thing you read going to the page.

matthewmcg 12y ago
Didn't the '386 also inspire the creation of Linux?
- kyberias 12y ago
  Yes, and I think much more than Windows.
- chubot 12y ago
  Yup, also 386BSD. According to their website, Linus actually had some code in there in the early days, which is interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/386BSD
- michaelmike 12y ago
  Inspire is not quite the word I would use, I think. The reason so much was done on the 386 is because Intel finally dropped that god-awful segmented addressing in favor of a flat memory model. In addition, protected mode became actually useful and was necessary for a Unix-like OS to be created (where you have multitasking and protected sections of RAM). Doom was also a killer-app for the 386.

csbrooks 12y ago

Some placeholder text got left in: "Remember, keep it concise, yet personal. Ask yourself: if someone stopped reading here would they be ready to make a contribution?"

illumen 12y ago
Does not give me confidence in the review process at indiegogo. Edit: ah.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  While this is indiegogo, Kisckstarter recently removed their review process entirely.

peterhajas 12y ago

John and I met during our undergrad education at RPI. There was a small but passionate group of students passionate about IC photography.

phkahler 12y ago

I always liked the 68000 and wished IBM had chosen it instead. It was a real 32bit chip and I still have an instruction set book for it dated 1979.

petercooper 12y ago

Is there a delay on Indiegogo or has a fundraiser that's interesting enough to hit HN front page for an hour only managed to attract a single $5 pledge in that time? (Which strikes me as odd given it's getting voted up.)

codingdave 12y ago

I think this sounds like a decent project. But I do wonder about the funding goal. It sounds like the equipment is already purchased. Asking other people to "recoup" his costs for equipment that he already owns and uses in his hobbies seems a bit unfair. Likewise, with vague funding goals like enabling research and funding equipment upgrades... and the fact that he is matching the price a commercial outfit would charge to do this... I just get the sense that we aren't being asked to fund a project as much as the public is being asked to become a paying client for a professional service. Not that the service sounds bad - the results would be cool. I'd just like to know what the actual project costs will be, and have the goal match that. Anything above and beyond that goal, of course, he should feel free to use to recoup costs and upgrade.

jondtaylor 12y ago

I noticed this in the blurb: "Remember, keep it concise, yet personal. Ask yourself: if someone stopped reading here would they be ready to make a contribution?"

roghummal 12y ago

It sucks that http://siliconpr0n.org http://siliconpr0n.org has burst into flames. People would probably be more excited about this if they could check it out. Similarly, you could check out the Silicon Zoo (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/ http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/). Very cool stuff!

terminus 12y ago

I have been fascinated with chip diagrams like these for a long time: http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2012_04_19_Ivy_Bridges_GPU_2-25_times_Sandys.html http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2012_04_19_Ivy_Bridges_GP... http://chip-architect.com/news/2003_09_21_Detailed_Architecture_of_AMDs_64bit_Core.html http://chip-architect.com/news/2003_09_21_Detailed_Architect... Of course the ones he's planning to photograph are older generation ones but worthy nonetheless. Would be interesting to map structures on the metal mask to chip level structures but that's for later.