How I reverse engineer a chip
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 เม.ย. 2017
- A whirlwind tour of my procedure going from physical chip to annotated die image to schematic to wiki page to you!
Some updates since I made this video: I no longer have a Patreon. I ditched them after they started becoming unfriendly to small contributors and small projects by making the fee structure punishing for those.
Also, why do this? For me personally, it's primarily curiosity, a DIY desire to build up skills, my own education, and trying to build a nice library of images on project5474.org for others to learn from. There are practical applications for more modern chips, namely investigations for patent infringement, and of course competitive research. "Reverse engineering" doesn't just mean "I don't know how this works", but "I want to find out exactly how this was implemented". Different chip manufacturers built the same logic chips in different ways and it's interesting to see the differences.
More on the process:
* Hot sulfuric acid decapsulation of plastic packages: • Decapsulating a plasti...
* Heat decapsulation of ceramic packages: • Decapsulating a cerami...
* Reverse engineering a simple CMOS chip: • Reverse engineering a ... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I worked for TI back in 1972-74 and was part of the design team that designed many of the LS series of parts, including this one.
This is really one nice comment to find on youtube, LS chips have been used all over the world as an introduction for electronics and still in use, I really hope you feel nice knowing that your work helped me out to get into electronics and a lot of people out there too, thank you sir.
@@nandoedwin1 Thanks for the reply.
I worked at TI for about 6 years, Also for Apple Computer for 5 years and Dell Computer for 1 year. I was the battery expert at Dell. BTW, some of the TI Chips will have my initials on the die.
Did the same thing with the devices which I helped to develop in the 70's and 80's @@k5at A skilled craftsperson likes to leave a mark. 😉 It's sometimes amazing how small and unobtrusive a signature you can leave.
@@k5at OMG this is so cool. I bought LS chips to build my Ben Eater style 8 bit computer
"Although it might not look like it, some steps can take days" he says. Well, it does look like most steps can take days. Amazing work.
This seems like some sort of lost art.
This is your daily dose of Recommendation
Reverse engineering chips
Yeah and this is quite fun to watch
Thanks TH-cam
@@Rainbow__cookie yeah. Thx TH-cam.
Beats the TMZ news abt Kylie Jenner that was just recommended to me
This is lie when I encountered painting restorations. Quite relaxing.
@@millanferende6723 yess. Such relacc
Thank you for doing this for the EE community and future generations.
As someone who learm EE i can say google is scaring me cus how did they know i learn EE
Adhwa Hazim KATERIMEIKA RIKAZIKIRIN Zulkifli hopefully you’re not learning in an English speaking country
@@harrisons62 luckily i live in Malaysia, so our mother tongue is not English, but our secondary compulsory language is English ahahah
@@princeedhwardhezmi6469 google is always listening to u
It took several hours in college for us to learn this art, but you explained it in just 5 minutes.
Great video.
Holy smokes. I've used computers for a long time. But not as much on the circuit board and chip level. Seeing your photo results and describing the lay out of the chip was really eye opening for me. Also I've never seen the different layers like that before. Very cool. Thank you.
1986: we will gonna have flying cars in the 2020s
2020s: we will try to reverse EVERY 80s chip
wish we could write messages in doritos xd
th-cam.com/video/y4qf4s19Aog/w-d-xo.html FIRST PERSONAL MULTICOPTER WAS TESTED IN THE USA
this is too real
quality comment right here
Think nasa could go to the moon today?
I feel like there's a huge gap between "here's a high quality image of each layer" and "here's the chip reverse engineered".
i was hoping for more, too. Interesting nontheless :)
Well, I guess this is not true for the pure TTL devices. There is not too much voodoo on those chips
@Fez Paladin Check out EEVBlog. Dave does some videos on reverse engineering circuit boards. While they're larger and easier to see, the principle remains the same(or very similar). He's also quite comical to watch.
You can identify transistors visually and trace out the interconnect. It's not that hard... Just a bit tedious.
@@dfs-comedy Dianne, please see my hundreds of upvotes and every single reply to my comment other than you having no idea to please realise you might not know how hard something that you can do easily is.
What a beautiful work station. I wish I had something of the same caliber. Great video Robert!
Thank you for being so thorough. This is awesome.
Thank you so much for contributing so much to the community !
People like you make this world possible
This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I could watch the stitch image layering all day for relaxation
That's so beautiful work, you can explain some of the basics of electronics engineering.
Your work is amazing and immensely appreciated by those of us who like to know, but can not afford to.
This is quite informative.
This would be amazing if you could do this for the Gameboy MBC(memory bank controllers)
and the Gameboy Advance custom Arm7tdmi.
i love that people like you do these things and make videos like this!
This is such great work and a lot of help for others who might need it for reference.
It took so long for youtube to recommend channel like this. I lovw your diy things.
Me: learning chip design ...and
TH-cam recommends this video
jup, they are listening. always.
just last weekend i discussed the fall of the soviet union with my dad. one day later, youtube recommends me the tagesschau from 89 (fall of DDR).
@@vinigretzky97 or he made some research on Google
@@micheledambrosio1680 we don't trust you GLaDOS
Same. ECE student.
Me:Doing nothing.
TH-cam: Hey do you want to know how he does this?
I am really grateful to your work , thanks robert sir
Wow, that is respectable work. Good job.
Fantastic work that is done, like it, makes technology more futher possible
Thank you. You are a very patient person.
that's insane, blows my mind away.
How much affort someone has to required in order to do that?!?!?
thanks man.
Que bueno que encontre tu canal, tenes publicadas muchas cosas interesantes! Saludos desde argentina!
Wow ! Very interesting and well made ! Thanks a lot for sharing !
thank you for your open knowledge contributions
Great video and happy to see such work station
This is the first video I've come across that you've made. Now I'm going to check out the decapping video and more!
Very clever! That looks like a heck load of work mate
Wow! Really great for future EE’s to learn! Thank you for your work
Thanks for showing us your very serviceable setup. 🙂👍Used to do this sort of thing professionally, almost half a century ago. It's slow, patient, fascinating and satisfying work. We also used near-UV light at high magnification (1200x and higher) to find surface features down to about a micron in width. A micron wide feature appears as a fuzzy line in that light, but you can make good use of interference patterns to figure out exactly what is going on. You can also etch through the layers of Silicon, to learn about Gate sizes, Oxide depths, doping depths, etc. It's possible to discern depths and thicknesses down to within a few hundred Angstroms, using similar optical methods and very careful etching; controlling etchant temperature, concentrations, mixtures and temperatures.
Wow didn't know about ICE program. I am a photographer and make panoramas, I think this will be my new tool of choice.
Real Talk? Yep, it works, and it's FREE 😃😃
Your work is impressive..thanks for sharing it.
Great job you've done there....This is something new I learnt today......Keep it up
This is amazing! I never realized this was even possible...
you make quality content! keep up the awesome work!
You are on another level. This is GOLD.
The movie Paycheck comes to mind looking at your work.
Sir this was amazing. Thank you very much for your amazing work
This was very nice, thank you for sharing this with us.
Excellent job doing this work.
Very interesting! Thank you for sharing the process :)
Lot of simple but clever ideas! :)
New to your TH-cam and love to see more, I'll support you just keep it up!
Excellent work and processes
Hi Robert, to answer your question : Yes I enjoyed very much your video.
I fell on it on youtube, and it's exactly what I would have dreamt of, without even trying to ask :
You are here describing in high details, th work cycle of professional hardware engineering. Maybe I'll have an opportunity to explain you why, I was digging everywhere to find that.
Many thanks for your excellent work : I know how much work it is to make videos that feel so easy and informative at the same time
Jean-Baptiste
I remember the big softcover books that TI made to describe their chips, the LS172 was a popular one.
I had no idea this was even possible! My mind is blown! MAN, I wish I could study with you!
James Bond could that already
Never seen any content like this...I really appreciate this awesome work...(new sub to ur channel, hope I get awesome deconstructions & many more)😊
Hello, I really enjoyed watching your video. Thank you for uploading.
Beautiful work.
thank you robert i can´t get it but it is so nice to see such meticulous work impresive very impresive i wonder if there are videos showing the normal process i mean how they make them but i think this is much more difficult in a way specially made in this artisan way incredible thanks again for showing us so well
It looks like you have a trinocular microscope or at least a switchable camera port. Having had an AmScope with the latter configuration I ended up 3D-printing a clamp to which a wooden board was screwed. The board, having a notch and a covering of foam tape allowed one to just place the phone onto it, looking at a regular eyepiece popped into the camera port.
It's a worthwhile build that maintains the convenience and connectivity of a smartphone.
Excellent job you make here!
Awesome work! Appreciate your work.
so cool - great vid robert!
This is simply great work.
Thumbs up for you.
Thank you for your work!!
thanks for all your hardwork :)
That is really fantastic and I am fascinated, thank you for making this video.
I’d love to see this chip built out onto a pcb. That would be cool.
this kind of bipolar oldies (used sometimes nowadays), 74LS**, have an equivalent circuit quite often sketched on the datasheet... CMOS ones may have a bit of problems more, since the mosfets are not a standard type, they are specifically engeneered for complementary operation... you can use in that case a CD4007 to have some "free" mosfets for the use, but that chip is.... already a chip
Hmm yes of course
@@redoverdrivetheunstoppable4637 exacly why make a chip with a chip actually it can be usefull if the chip is just multiple chip in 1 but in this case its not its a circuit of transistor and resistor that need a plastic case to not die instantly because of ambient noise
As someone in their second year of EET at college, this blows my mind.
quit while you're ahead, kid
Truly amazing work!
Rob, great video thanks. Can you give a video tour of the equipment setup of your chip lab.
This is amazing ... You are today's real IT scientist ...
Wow. I didn't expect this video to hold my interest. I loved it. I just subscribed.
Who on earth would dislike this? Nice one my friend! Have an awesome day!
wonderful work
This is really great, thanks for your preservation and documentation work! Ever go after those 'super integration' chips from the early 90s that helped make laptops feasible? Always thought they'd be cool to image, usually a composite of several standard intel chips like 82CXX DMA/PIC/UART. I always see them mentioned in Toshiba service manuals.
pixelflow: My guess is that those chips have features beyond the optical range of the microscope. Basically feature sizes under 2000nm or so can't be resolved. it's why I stick to 80's chips.
Thats what has me curious, because some are made around ~87-91!
How would one reverse engineer newer chips from the 90s then?
Brandon Klopp An electron microscope would be required for the next few levels of feature size.
Outstanding work !!!
Excellent engineering!
Excellent work
I Looove this. It is really impressive work.
Awesome video, thanks! Regarding the stitching of photos, there's also a nice open-source/multiplatform program called "Hugin". I used it when stitching scans of old schematics and it worked great.
This is very cool! Nice job!
I've recently started to enjoy TH-cam recommendations, because at times it actuall gets it right! Like this video/channel. Some weird geek talking about how he reverse engineers chips: wow! Instant subscription!
Respect!
Amazing work.
Have a list of sought after chips? Fans might have laying around for you.
Amazing video! Always wondered how this was done. Thanks.
Ever think about powering the dies up? Things like optoisolators would be interesting.
I use a stack shot macro stage which makes things easy.
This guy is master of this art.
Great work man
hey! nice raise 3d printer mate. In the last months me and a co worker were able to convince the company we work for to buy one. We got the pro plus and it is amazing.
Fascinating. I wonder where the progress will go in 5 or 10 years. Specifically if the chemical aspect would be still here of it would be as simple as popping and IC in a DIY cheap decapping laser machine that automatically etch away the material and take pictures of the die.
What a fantastic channel, keep it up.
Oh, man... It's a lot of work. Congrats!
Im not into this kind of stuff but yet u deserved a subscribe, amazing stuff
amazing work
great job ! That's a lot of work
Fantastic job
thank you for your amazing work
Awesome video . Very informative.
Nice work sir
Very cool! Nice work!
Awesome work. I really like it.
Robert
Nice work, thanks for the video.
However, I have one question... Why?
Very interesting! I don’t know a lot about electronics… I’ve only been learning for a few years. But I go to a local electronics recycling place almost every day for a few hours. A buddy of mine runs the yard and I get some pretty neat things. If you’ll tell me where to look… I’ll keep an eye out for certain industrial Devices and old things that might have chips you want in them.
I collect chips and parts. Iv desoldered over tens of thousands of parts in the last three years. I know that sounds ridiculous and exaggerated but it’s not. I developed a method of using low pressure through an air compressor and a handheld modified airbrush, along with a soldiering in the other hand… And I can desolder a 16 pin dip chip in a matter of a few seconds.
I started doing it to learn and collect parts that I could use in projects... and after a few months kept going because it’s like a treasure hunt… and although it isn’t worth my time to salvage and save parts for the sole purpose of reusing them… I still enjoy it because of the treasure hunt.
. Sure it’s great to have them in stock, But it’s almost a full-time job salvaging that many parts in keeping them organized. And there is no time left over building projects… And not mention these are used parts were talking about.
So after removing testing and cataloging hundreds of parts per day five days a week for a year and a half… Now I only go for the big IGBT’s, and other expensive or beautiful components.
I love Collecting parts that are visually appealing, or interesting some other way. Especially when Government corporations or large industrial companies bring high-grade weird and interesting things to the scrap yard. So I focus on that and pretty much avoid consumer-electronics unless they’re super old!
I love old White and purple ceramic chips… they are my favorite! And of course I could get most of them on eBay for pennies or a few dollars… But it’s more fun if I only add parts to my collection that I find myself! I have over 150 pounds of transistors. Spread over half a dozen parts storage drawer banks. If I take out the weight of the drawer banks there’s at least 150 pounds of semiconductors. And my favorites are framed in a flat case… Stuck in foam.
I love finding really old chips, fancy TO-3 package transistors that were hand-painted Or have colorful silkscreen Graphics, and all kinds of other weird things like early examples of LEDs.
I know very little about the electronic theory, however I have put together a humble TestBench with test gear that I mostly repaired myself. I can do the basic stuff like look for burned areas, replace filter caps, maybe do a bit of in circuit testing. That’s as far as I go. I just can’t wrap my head around the rest yet. However I’m hoping one day I can understand it well enough to do some more interesting things with the old parts I salvage.
Would be awesome to sit down and get the old parts out, characterize all of these cool transistors and chips with my curve tracers and other test gear. I just think it would be a lot of fun
Sorry to ramble on… But if you can give me an idea where to look or what kind of parts you’re interested in… I’ll be glad to help.
I Maybe even have some old transistors and weird things that you might disassemble or cut cross sections out of.
That’s another thing I will eventually try. I already have gemstone cutting equipment and lapidary gear so it would be cool to do cut cross sections of all types of components… And photograph them under my microscope.
Anyway let me know if I can help.!m,
Awesome ! Congrats and thanks !!