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#integratedcircuits#diephotos#decapping

Reading Silicon: How to Reverse Engineer Integrated Circuits

HACKADAY

209K subscribers • 2 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Ken Shirriff

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

415K views9 years ago2 recommendations

HardwareSecurityReverse engineeringCPUs and computer architectureElectronics

Ken Shirriff explains how to reverse engineer integrated circuits from high-resolution die photos using classic chips as examples.

Ken Shirriff has seen the insides of more integrated circuits than most people have seen bellybuttons. (This is an exaggeration.) But the point is, where we see a crazy jumble of circuitry, Ken sees a riddle to be solved, and he's got a method that guides him through the madness. In his talk at the 2016 Hackaday SuperConference, Ken stepped the audience through a number of famous chips, showing how he approaches them and how you could do the same if you wanted to, or needed to. Reading an IC from a photo is not for the faint of heart, but with a little perseverance, it can give you the keys to the kingdom. We're stoked that Ken shared his methods with us, and gave us some deeper insight into a handful of classic silicon, from the Z80 processor to the 555 timer and LM7805 voltage regulator, and beyond. Read the article: hackaday.com/?p=237161 Learn more about Ken Shirriff: righto.com/ Learn more about the Hackaday SuperConference: hackaday.io/superconference/

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as an excellent introduction to the craft of reverse engineering hardware chips from silicon die photographs.

espeedon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Jeff Hawkins: Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence [video]”

…have the right tools, you can analyze the hardware and/or model the data flows to determine what the optimal data structures must be based on the hardware capacity constraints and data flow. Google "reverse engineering hardware chip circuits" or watch Ken Shirriff's 2016 Hackaday talk... Reading Silicon: How to Reverse Engineer Integrated Circuits link to this video…

gnunezon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Siliconpr0n: High Resolution Chip Maps”

Some hobbyists use these die shots to reverse engineer older chips, bypassing the need to decap the chips themselves. The craft is explained nicely in this video link to this video .

aavaason Hacker News • Mentions

On “Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? (2017)”

People do reverse engineer chips by photographing them. link to this video (Reading Silicon: How to Reverse Engineer Integrated Circuits). But as far as I know, the same cannot be done with the brains even if we can photograph it. I guess the 3D structure of the brain compounded with high interconnection between neurons does not make it easy.