What?

An Integrated Circuit (IC) Reverse Engineering (RE) Wiki

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This wiki is based upon the following principle:

Observation 11.6. Understanding layouts and cross sections of semiconductor devices does not require all of the physics and manufacturing details. To gain a fairly useful — though merely qualitative — appreciation, it suffices to differentiate among

* (conductive) metals,
* (conductive) polysilicon,
* strongly n- and p-doped semiconductor materials,
* weakly n- and p- doped semiconductor materials, and
* (nonconductive) dielectrics.

“Digital Integrated Circuit Design: From VLSI Architecture to CMOS Fabrication” by Hubert Kaeslin

Thus this wiki does not attempt to deal with detailed device physics, floorplanning algorithms, etc. Rather, it aims to provide a high level qualitative feel of how ICs are built so that they can be analyzed for one reason or another. Information here is not aimed to be sufficient to actually design an IC but may give a good feel of what goes into it.

The most developed pages are currently:

  • Decapsulation, especially related to epoxy
  • Research paper and presentations lists
  • List of die image archives

What is this?

  • A place to collaborate on IC reverse engineering
  • Document techniques for decapping chips
  • Document techniques for analyzing to netlists
  • Document techniques for getting around chip protection

What is this NOT?

Where to start?

Disclaimer

Many of the procedures on this Wiki are extremely dangerous and should not be attempted except by trained professionals. We take no responsibility for accuracy of the information including, but not limited to, any safety precautions or other procedural notes that may result in personal or material damage. Do not attempt these procedures unless you are certain that you can do so safely without damage to yourself, others, and/or your surroundings. This information is provided without warranty and for reference only. We are in no way responsible for how you use it.

Recruiting

If you want to contribute, send me a brief message telling me your interest in IC RE and what you think you might be able to contribute if you are given access. Contact me directly at JohnDMcMaster <at> gmail.com

News

01/04/2015

Real SSL cert installed. Also since SSL is now “officially” supported, I've fixed the issue causing maps to not work in https

05/27/2014

Tried to get a StartSSL cert but they didn't get back to me :(

11/20/2013

Wiki software upgraded, shout if anything looks broken

04/05/2013

Since I've gotten enough comments about it…yes I know the SSL cert isn't signed correctly in addition to it being self signed. I didn't realize at the time that you couldn't sign for both *.siliconpr0n.org and siliconpr0n.org. Since its self signed and hadn't yet decided if wwww.siliconpr0n.org or siliconpr0n.org was official address I decided I just didn't care enough. Want it fixed? Donate $200 / year to get me a signed certificate. That's way more than the web hosting costs.

01/21/2013

Server upgraded at its 1 year anniversary. Latency and such should be a little better. If you didn't notice that, storage is double double double what it was before so look forward to more pr0n!

8/1/2012

The site is probably much better now than it ever was on wikispaces so I've removed the crash headline

Sometime in the past

“To strike down the phoenix is to slash at the flame”

Bare with us while we bring the old systems back online

 
start.txt · Last modified: 2021/01/29 19:29 by mcmaster
 
Except where otherwise noted, content on this wiki is licensed under the following license: CC Attribution 4.0 International
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