The Designer's Guide Community Forum
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl General >> Tech Talk >> IC reverse engineering https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1167904411 Message started by topquark on Jan 4th, 2007, 1:53am |
Title: IC reverse engineering Post by topquark on Jan 4th, 2007, 1:53am Hello folks Had been musing over this for a while now.. what exactly does reverse engineering mean in the context of IC design. Does it really involve putting a new competitor's IC under micrograph, identify layout of any block, derive its schematics and analyze??!! Are there really any job profile out there for this kind of stuff?!! It'd be nice to hear experts views on this. Regards, Gau |
Title: Re: IC reverse engineering Post by ACWWong on Jan 4th, 2007, 2:33am In large companies stories are rife that there are groups which do this. Although this might have been the case 10 years ago, I doubt it still happens so much now due to the complicated multi-metal processes of today. Previously I have looked at competitor chips at a probe station to identify topolgies and try to work out what was going on from a higher level point of view.... it ain't easy and to be honest little was gleaned, and I'd have been better off spending the time doing developing my own designs.... Having said this, it would be enlightening to hear if people still attempt reverse engineering on modern processes from purely looking at fabricated chips.... if somehow someone had your gds2 then thats a different story... |
Title: Re: IC reverse engineering Post by Geoffrey_Coram on Jan 4th, 2007, 5:52am I think there are still companies out there that, in fact, do deprocess chips to figure out how they work. Some of this sort of work is used to determine if patent infringement has occurred. |
Title: Re: IC reverse engineering Post by qiushidaren on Jan 10th, 2007, 6:22pm Actually I am doing reverse engineering right now, I think for a newbie in analog IC design, reverse engineering is the first step for you to get it started. -Terry |
Title: Re: IC reverse engineering Post by Croaker on Jan 12th, 2007, 1:55pm Well, reverse-engineering is what you're doing anytime you are trying to understand a design you didn't create out of the blue! ;) Chipworks, a Nortel spin-off is a well-known reverse-eng company. I think they can basically photograph the chip and some software figures out the layout and schematics. As Alan says, I'm not sure how big a competitive advantage it is to do this...maybe just to see if there's any big 'aha' that you're missing. I think it'd be most useful for resolving legal disputes. |
Title: Re: IC reverse engineering Post by loose-electron on Feb 1st, 2007, 3:22pm http://www.chipworks.com/default.aspx See above link - It is a business, they are one of the bigger players, and a lot of quiet behind the scenes stuff happens as well. |
Title: Re: IC reverse engineering Post by xn47 on Jun 12th, 2007, 6:28pm I also have a reverse project right now.. I have here an attachment of double base npn transistor.. |
The Designer's Guide Community Forum » Powered by YaBB 2.2.2! YaBB © 2000-2008. All Rights Reserved. |