This is an old revision of the document!
John McMaster's image collection
All of my images are released under CC BY unless otherwise noted.
Enjoy this work? Consider supporting me on Patreon!
Images:
Relevant equipment list:
Equipment I'd like
I got a lot of requests to image stuff, so here's my official policy.
TLDR: for a typical chip, I suggest $25-200 donation to get it decapped and imaged for public use. Delayering is extra
Please provide the following information for each chip:
In short, I focus on chips that are of interest to me. I do lots of chips for others, but I give priority to people that are able to provide funds. This section is written with open source projects as the main audience, but note I also offer services through my embedded security consulting service.
In terms of consumables, equipment wear etc, each simple chip costs me about $25 to decap/image (not counting huge equipment NRE). As of 2014, a professional shop charges around $100 for a simple, low resolution top metal dceap/image. People give me upwards of $200 per simple chip if they are feeling generous and want to support other projects. Simple ⇒ not implant ROM and preferably does not require delayering. Not sure what a shop would charge for delayering, but lets say generally 3x the cost of top metal imaging. Chips from the 80's should be simple.
Delayering is typically more risky to the chip and myself (toxic chemicals like hydrofluoric acid). Similar issues with staining and lapping. Lapping is currently extremely labor intensive and not very well refined (although I can get a small area easily).
I prefer to focus on chips that I can (eventually) release on siliconpr0n.org, ideally under CC licenses.
In general I want to focus on R&D / labwork and not hand digitization. I do have some limited semi-automatic digitization capabilities for planarized chips though that I'd like to develop (ex: works on PS1 chipset).
Most of this is targeted towards small chips up to the mid 90's. If the die is obnoxiously large (ex: 486 CPU) it will be difficult for me to photograph and stitch the entire thing. Similarly most of my equipment is targeted towards larger processes (say 180+nm), although I do have a small SEM if required. See XC2C32A for an example 180 nm chip taken with a relatively low power objective, noting in theory I can get about 11x the detail (NA 0.42 ⇒ 1.4).
Other: most of the work is in decapping, not actual imaging. If you happen to already have a bare, clean die and would be satisfied with a quick / lower quality scan, feel free to send me a few dies. This also can work out well since most of the NRE cost is in the microscope, not the decapping supplies.
Chips are non-returnable. If you need something back, please make an explicit agreement before sending.