That maker list is unusable. It's not sorted in any way, contains duplicates (MOS Technology & Commodore CSG are the same), and would gain from reorganizing some brands (gathering Nintendo CPUs together, for instance).
You can destructively deprocess dies, removing a layer at a time and imaging at each layer. 20ish years ago you could still do this with a polishing wheel and a fine slurry; don’t know if that’s still viable.
I would imagine this is of decent interest to people reverse engineering chip designs, or doing failure analysis, so it’s possible someone might actually be trying this at scale.
I would pay for this as a high quality book. Ideally some info and detail about each processor. Anyone else?
https://arenamag.com/silicon
That maker list is unusable. It's not sorted in any way, contains duplicates (MOS Technology & Commodore CSG are the same), and would gain from reorganizing some brands (gathering Nintendo CPUs together, for instance).
Have people tried training models to decode these photographs into code?
How would you do that if there's like 60 layers of metal conductors over the silicon substrate?
Fair. I guess it would be necessary to CT scan them, like the Vesuvius Challenge
You can destructively deprocess dies, removing a layer at a time and imaging at each layer. 20ish years ago you could still do this with a polishing wheel and a fine slurry; don’t know if that’s still viable.
Not sure if regular tomography would work, but this has been done at high enough resolution with some fancier techniques (ptychography): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07615-6
I would imagine this is of decent interest to people reverse engineering chip designs, or doing failure analysis, so it’s possible someone might actually be trying this at scale.
It’s like taking a picture of someone’s house to determine their current medical diagnosis.
Garbage in, it’ Herpes.
Could have just said to determine where all the pipes are but you know, you could go all the way to herpes I suppose… :)
Computer, enhance!
We need two people on the keyboard at the same time to enahnce.
https://github.com/giulioz/mmo-chip described in talk https://youtu.be/5211iYEqnzo?t=44m30s
Amazing site. I've a friend who is an aspiring oil painter and I just sent him this link. I can't wait to see the results!
Here is one more (intel 4004)
https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/none/path/s674...