I'm a (retired) analogue IC designer and have many happy (?) memories studying other companies IC's using optical microscopes in our engineering laboratory, to reverse engineering them. It was a good way to learn tricks of the trade. I hope some engineers have studied some of my creations! We also used manual micro-manipulators to electrically probe connections when studying a powered up die. We sometimes used a laser to cut tracks in the lab. We also occasionally used an ion-beam milling machine to slice into the depth of an IC so we could modify the silicon experimentally. Oh what fun we had!

@willynebula6193

6 жыл бұрын

Ion beam milling machine what a unique bit of gear! Something like that would have cost millions. What companies would even manufacturer a machine like that

@franklydude

6 жыл бұрын

I forget the name of the company we used. It's not a big machine. Same principle as an electron beam microscope I think, although the polarity is obviously reversed! A tall evacuated chamber along which one accelerates charged particles. I think you have a very hot "anode" source creating a plasma (if that is the right terminology) so ions can be sucked away by the electric field. magnetic fields deflect the beam. The ions are much heavier than electrons and abrade the surface they hit... If I recall correctly, there was even technology to deposit material at a lower energy so that one could add a conducting track, very slowly......

@fakename3344

4 жыл бұрын

@@franklydude Would you happen to remember what it was? I'm really curious as to where I'd get the equipment to do this.

@franklydude

4 жыл бұрын

@@fakename3344 I think it was companay in Cambridge or maybe even a university facility, I live in the UK... If you do a google for "focussed ion beam" milling etc, you should find some resources, certainly in the USA and in Europe, probably Japan and China too..

@gregorymalchuk272

4 жыл бұрын

@@franklydude Yeah, they also have ion implantation (basically ion doping) machines.

I've always been impressed with those who could read disassembled code. but at minute 11:43 , Ken is disassembling SILICON and THEN disassembling the code that is in that ROM in that silicon! Oh as if that is not enough, he also wrote a simulator of the calculator he reverse engineered BY LOOKING AT THE SILICON!? WOW...

@HxcTufty

6 жыл бұрын

Anyone that had being paying attention to EE classes (VLSI, Computer Archtecture, Microprocessors etc.) can do that. It is a lot of work though.

@dummypg6129

6 жыл бұрын

Actually there is a method on how to perform that... Decap, hotspot, curve tracing etc. its just depending on the ic function/s thats varying and talent is required.

@Daniel-ib5bx

6 жыл бұрын

I’m sayin right... what a bad ass lol

@zariumsheridan3488

6 жыл бұрын

what a royal waste of time though ...

@satibel

6 жыл бұрын

You are watching videos, what a waste of time! Jokes aside, any hobby may seem like a waste of time to others.

I studied automation engineering and almost everything here was a part of the curriculum. I wish it was taught like this! Had so much difficulties in understanding the implementation of gates on chip that I couldn’t visualize it so had to learn them and I hated ‘just learning’ part. There’s no fun without seeing it practically. Great video

Laser pointer vs mouse pointer :-(

@leocurious9919

5 жыл бұрын

"this here..." "these ..." WHERE?!

Simply put: Great overview of silicon features and excellent approach on chip decapping.

Very nice and interesting to see how those basic components and circuits are made. Great work!

FFS, somebody give this guy a glass of water!

@meepk633

6 жыл бұрын

Banana noises.

@Mx6D

6 жыл бұрын

so true lmao. Michael you hit right on the head

@crackmaster88

6 жыл бұрын

hahah i thought i was the only one who noticed that :D :D

@Euquila

6 жыл бұрын

it's like he's chewing on the very circuitry from his lecture.

@huckanz

6 жыл бұрын

actually those dry-mouth sounds are so pleasant for me... weird...

Ken is awesome

@giuliaesposito3071

5 жыл бұрын

u too

@Adam-yd8dw

5 жыл бұрын

My hero ❤️

@rooster443

5 жыл бұрын

Reverse engineering, the ultimate hacker skillz

@TracyNorrell

8 ай бұрын

If this the guy from the curious Marc videos?

man you have to give the name of the music played at the end... so good

Good talk but what are they doing with the camera taking shots from the back of the room and switching to the talker when he is showing something on the screen. Whoever filmed and edited this, watch some defcon talks.

@michaelbuckers

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah the filming is abysmal. 95% of the time he's showing something with a laser pointer, you can't see what it is.

@josephmazzeo2713

3 жыл бұрын

I really wanted to see what he meant by the "oh that's bad..." slide.

@darrelldourte9455

2 жыл бұрын

Couldn't watch...camera man destroyed all follow along to the educational value seeking to be given. Hand that man a broom.

Thanks, had fun getting a better look into the transistor designs that actually make their way into an ic.

I need the laser pointer when you zoom in please! Because we have no idea where he is pointing to.

Thank you! This is the kind of information I always tryed to find. Great links!

crazy how much stuff is on these tiny pieces, and its getting even crazier by the day. I can't even imagine how much engineering hours and knowlege went into any of these things.

If you guys like Ken Shirriff, I suggest watching the CuriousMarc channel. Ken is often there tagging along and working with the others in restoring and understanding these old computers.

@drdyna

2 ай бұрын

That's where I knew the face from, haha. I was sitting here watching this dude like where have I seen him....watching Marc's space shuttle computer videos!

Early Mostek calculator devices (1970s) had fake contacts that would mess with reverse engineering and swiping the circuit. The fake contacts were not able to be detected under optical microscopy unless you were good at noting the direction of focus

i actually learnt quite a lot

Very interesting what you do Ken. Thank You.

Currently in school for comp E and we're slowly going over the topics presented, so this talk is really fascinating (to see this stuff in practice!) Does anybody know how large were the teams that were designing these chips?

Phenomenal presentation! I want to thank that guy (and get him a bottle of water!)

I chuckled when I saw the instruction "waitno"

*_THAT_* was freaking cool!!! _So much better_ than textbook cartoons!

Fascinating talk, learned a few things new things it. Thank you so much.

Absolutely fascinating! Thanks a lot!

2nd time i watch this, still wrecking my brain about that ALU trick.

It could've been even longer presentation and I still would watch it.

Thank for sharing this! Really appreciate it!

MikesElectricStuff does videos deencapsulating chips which is cool, but havent seen or forgot ever seeing anyone show a transistor-level look! Cool

very nice inside of very popular chips. I always wonder how do they work still so tinny.

Great job! Thank you for sharing :D

this is crazy, awesome, breathtaking

If you have an archive of the raw footage from all of the cameras, it would greatly helpful to have the wide angle shot showing you pointing is really helpful. However, the slides are better resolution, but where he is pointing is lost. The lecture is very interesting, but when you don't see where he is pointing makes much more difficult to follow Thanks.

@edgeeffect

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah you can't win with the slides... laser pointer OR better quality image but you can't have both.... ideally we need speakers to use some kind of "virtual laser pointer" on the presentation laptop.

@olegil2

2 жыл бұрын

@@edgeeffect You can have both, it's called picture in picture. You can show slide, presenter and picture of where he's pointing at the same time. Then the virtual experience would in most cases actually be better than the real one. "Virtual laser pointer" as in mouse pointer? Yeah, would be nice if someone invented that.

Beautiful work.

Fantastic - very informative.

Rawr, Love the chip die art!

this channel is awesome

im a big fan of yours since curious marc channel !!!!

I have a David and Mann x,y table from a microchip factory. Very accurate. It had a 110 volt motor on the x axis. So I wonder if it was for cutting the wafers up.

I don't think I'd wanna buy a POSFET OR a POS transistor. this is a very interesting video.

@tibfulv

5 жыл бұрын

How about an old SGI Tezro? SGI doesn't exist anymore, and to our knowledge these machines aren't repairable using standard services. Reengineering the ICs may be the only way to service them, and emulation requires the same thing.

Absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much.

after a decades of innovation we still haven't figured out how to get a laser pointer on youtube

Great lecture

28:30 Looks more like a factorio base than an IC XD

@PilotPlater

6 жыл бұрын

this made me chuckle

@DavidHenderson1

4 жыл бұрын

I mean, in a way, they're essentially the same thing. With Factorio, you're taking resources and converting them into other resources. With processors you're taking inputs and converting them into outputs.

well, I started programming in the late 60s, but I can still understand like maybe up to 30 percent of this. I checked with a couple other people, sure enough, they couldn't understand a single word, so I'm happy enough.

@ramizyabac3256

Жыл бұрын

:)

Silicon in an elevated enthalpy reaction(add heat) undergoes an elevation of the 3p orbitol, allowing for an enthalpy controlled reduction/oxidation reaction of the atom. So start there. Then make transistors...

absolutely brilliant

Merci pour la vidéo j'aime beaucoup les recherches

@ismaillafria2757

4 жыл бұрын

كتبغيو البحث ولا كيعجبكم غير تشوفو الأخرين كيقومو بأمور خارقة بحال هكا,,العربان أش عندكم ماديرو

where did the cool opening and closing music come from? anyone know who made it?

Great stuff! Is there a forum somewhere (something like reddit) where ppl take a stab at analysing these die pics?

When I was 11 or 12 years old I did a science fair thing where I got the chips out and let people look at them with a microscope. The way I came up with for getting the silicon out was simply by heating the package until it crumbled.

@hydrochloricacid2146

6 жыл бұрын

metallitech hey that's what i do!

Oh, it's Ken from Marc's channel!

My digital logic professor brought me here. THANKS J DAWG

Fantastic stuff. Is there anything like a program that can be fed a die photo and more or less make sense of it?

@snooks5607

3 жыл бұрын

that's how you create Skynet

Guys like him and the designers are out of this world, seriously extra terrestrial ufos.....wow.... way over my head..........

Thank you. I wanted to ask about the power of the microscope used

This blew my mind

Nice explaination

I always wondered if a working chip with a metal lid will continue to work with the lid popped off and exposed to ambient air. The lid would have to be removed carefully so as not to damage the bonding wires or the chip. Would light have any effect? How about a low power laser such as from a pointer? EPROMs continue to work even though the window is exposed (although erasure might occur after some time), so I guess yes?

@KevinJohnson-fw8kv

Жыл бұрын

it has to be exposed to UV light a strong UV light. Which is why some of these EEPROMs that are being pulled out of vintage computers from the 80's still have all of their EEPROM data intact.

Brilliant :)

@nagualdesign

6 жыл бұрын

My sentiments exactly.

Oh hello Ken! Seen you before hanging around with Curious Marc.

@hqqns

4 жыл бұрын

It was a pleasant surprise to recognise someone. He definitely is a reverse engineering king.

You sounded really nervous. Relax, it was a fascinating talk and your presentation was excellent.

For YT videos, I suggest you show the diagram next to the actual screen. I can't see that laser dot on my screen to sync with his explanation lol.

This looks like it takes a lot of patience. But that's okay, well worth it in the end.

YES!

This Guy is a Beast with Silicon! Wow!

This guy should definitely write a book about this topic. I'd love to learn more about it.

we should b extremely thankful 4da existence of XEROX ALTO cuz it was a precursor 2all modern Pc's.

This is awesome.

I watch these videos with no background in CS, i'm just like wtf how is this even possible?!?

@yaus0527

6 жыл бұрын

No, it is possible. If you study semiconductor related knowledge, it will be piece of cake.

His good . the true beauty of transistors is the differance in opening, and closing . Some are Voltage controlled, some are Ampere controlled, some are Normally Open NO, others are NC, Normally Closed , before you apply voltage to them . NPN & PNP junctions .

Who's the end theme song from? I need that track badly..

Am I the only one who saw "Instruction ROM" in the calculator chip and immediately thought, I'd love to experiment with that and see what changing values in it would do?

I've found that very flat ceramic chips (which can't be chiseled) can be heated and will crumble, though occasionally with case residue on the die. The fumes are not good for breathing.

@andreassjoberg3145

5 жыл бұрын

I think that we soon will have access to high power laser beams that can chisel away AND scan a chip in 3D and remodel them, as a by-product of the nascent 3D-printing technology.

Excellent amount of information. Respect. Just the Saliva sound was a bit bothersome. Sounded a bit kinky while under the impression of knowledge. You know.

shame I cant see the lazer pointer

This Guy is a master of the modern reverse Engineering, a God...

@choosetolivefree

6 жыл бұрын

These chips are not modern, but in fact very old. This would be nearly impossible to do with modern chips, as one of the commenters above explained very well

9:02 just for efficiency, would it not be better to use just 2 transistors to solve the NOR circuit the 3 transistor seems of no use theoretical it might be part of the drawment for the negation but why would you do that then

I've been wondering how the control logic schematic looks like and how it interacts with the interrupts in the instruction rom( schematic) at transistor leve of the z80 and it's burning my neural circuit. Someone plz save me!

It's Master Ken!!!

Incredible only in America such geniuses self develop

Excellent!

You are amazing!

My favorite past time hobby is editing assembly code in original Nintendo games. Hex editor for DOS. Keeps me busy.

ALU the real brain of a chip by Ken.S

Wow! Amazing!!

bro, u r amazing, that is soo cool ,nd the earth is burning,

Nice outro music. Sounds very 303-ish :-)

i got a few chips open but it just was white mush. don't know where they put the transistors and i have a feeling they had just stuffed it with potatoe

Not unusual cur mirror it saves allot of space. Beautiful design

PoW!! Mind blown! Additionally, watch Ben Eater for step 2

That last shot looked totally like screenshot from Factorio.

that's impressive!

It would be so nice to "test" Sat TV again :) and reunite guys like Raton, Penga, Silverman etc,etc and learn from them again. I'm to old to start lol

@snooks5607

3 жыл бұрын

this sounds interesting, can you tell more about it?

hay quá. cám ơn rất nhiều. rất hữu ích. tôi rất thích chúng.

Cool video, thanks :)

"if you stare at it long enough it will start to make sense" ~ No, if YOU stare at it long enough it will start to make sense, if I stare at it long enough i'll get a headache. lol

@firmman4505

4 жыл бұрын

Ellotus Freeholy lol

Love it

Mr Ken Shirriff You have single handedly done the work of well trained teams and I dont think anyone even comprehends what you are able to do. It has a lot of weight to it. you are $1 as apposed to 100 pennies Sir.

Is that a factorio megabase???

Just realized he wrote the IR library for my garage stereo