grinding down chips was Re: QX10 graphics board

[Eric J Korpela]

On 1/24/06, Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  I've been dying to ask this question. Can you
> actually learn something (hopefully a whole lot!)
> about a chip if you actually did this??? What if there
> was some old chip for which there is no documentation.
> If, given the availability of the proper equipment
> (surface grinder?), you were able to take off say
> .0001" of material at a time, or thereabouts ;), would
> you have the ability to photograph it, and have
> something in the way of a working schematic?

I don't know if features would be immediately identifiable, but with
some work it should be possible.  I know of a company that was
attempting to build silicon debugger using a high speed image
intensified camera to watch photons emitted by the transistors as they
pass current.  Should work for reverse engineering... Given a couple
years and $500,000 I could probably build you one....  Then again I
would imagine that the device is patented.

Eric