Pentium-III autopsy

Interesting stuff. The method of inverting the die and bonding it to the processor carrier is called Flip-Chip (<a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Flip_chip" rel="nofollow">https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Flip_chip</a>), and replaced bonding wires for higher density and better thermal properties (you get direct access to the back of the silicon substrate)<p>The electron microscope images are all cross-sectional, because it appears he doesn't have the equipment to do surface etching, and just cleaved the chip. I've not generally seen good sectional images around though, so it's definitely an interesting look.<p><a href="http://www.flylogic.net/blog/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flylogic.net/blog/</a> has a lot of stuff about depackaging and reverse-engineering chips, as does "Dr Decapitator" (<a href="http://decap.mameworld.info/" rel="nofollow">http://decap.mameworld.info/</a>), who decaps old arcade ROMs, and then extracts their <i>actual data</i> from micrograph images to produce romfiles for emulators.<p>Edit:<p>The Sparkfun Saga of the Fake MCUs:<p>Part 1: <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kMgE8BEttl0J:www.sparkfun.com/news/350" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kMgE8B...</a><p>Part 2: <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mEZ-8gGcwukJ:www.sparkfun.com/news/364" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mEZ-8g...</a><p>Part 3: <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3Tlcu2MhTp0J:www.sparkfun.com/news/384" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3Tlcu2...</a><p>(Links via google cache because they seem to have broken their old news URL structure)<p>Edit^2: I forgot I had this old image of a System-in-Package radio module that I made myself (Digital camera through optical microscope at, iirc, 20x)<p><a href="http://metavore.org/faff/chip.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://metavore.org/faff/chip.jpg</a><p>The thick black lines at the bottom are millimetre markings on a ruler. The processor is at the centre, and the various other modules are SAW filters (<a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SAW_filter#SAW_filters" rel="nofollow">https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SAW_filter#SA...</a>)

Reminds me of the breakdown of the Mifare Classic RFID cards, but on a much larger scale. They took cross-sectional images of the circuits, then used a Matlab script to turn the images back into simulated circuits. Then they performed cryptanalysis on it! Papers and video: <a href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/track/Hacking/2378.en.html" rel="nofollow">http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/track/Hacking/23...</a> The video is long but entertaining :)<p>Edit: if the torrents aren't being seeded anymore, you can watch the video here <a href="http://www.podcast.tv/video-episodes/24c3-2378-mifare-2821896.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.podcast.tv/video-episodes/24c3-2378-mifare-282189...</a> or download from ftp://media.ccc.de/congress/24C3/matroska/24c3-2378-en-mifare_security.mkv

Kinda off-topic, but does anyone know how many registers the P-III and later have? I've read the P-II has 40, so I assume later chips have many more.<p>Register allocation is one of the more expensive phases in a compiler, and register allocation on the Intel instruction set is particularly hard because it has some few registers. It's kinda ironic that internally modern chips have zillions of registers. There's a fat chunk of software that squeezes a program in 8 registers and then a fat chunk of silicon that expands into however many registers the chip has. Not only is this wasted effort, the extra silicon costs Intel in terms of power consumption and it one reason at ARM are pWning them on low power platforms.

Jeri Ellsworth makes NMOS transistors on silicon wafer chips at home, with an oven, rust remover and some other home chemicals: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE</a>

I actually still have a P-III laying around here from an old PC that was being thrown, but the slot version with a massive heatsink. Just gathering dust, but a piece of history...

I think that the best possible comment is: Simply Amazing!