This is a very neat solution to a very difficult problem! A little amazed that governments or high-trust industries like aerospace don’t seem to be working on this approach, at least in public. Surprised to learn that most X-rays just pass right through the silicon details in chips, I wonder if ultrasound might be usable?
Downside, if you’re using 1070 nm infrared light your diffraction limit is going to be something like 500 nm if I’m remembering my physics correctly, so you’re going to have issues resolving things smaller than that. (You can probably do it, but not quickly or easily; it’s research lab stuff.) So you’ll see gross structures but not every detail. But that can be enough to filter out chips that are different on the “macro” level, which can still be useful when it’s so easy to do. And because it’s Bunnie Studios, he talks about this and considers how to design chips that are resistant to malicious changes too small to resolve!
The videos are pretty magical, too. He shines visible light on a package and you can see the surface and markings, and then takes it away to leave only infrared and you can see the actual chip beneath it.
This is a very neat solution to a very difficult problem! A little amazed that governments or high-trust industries like aerospace don’t seem to be working on this approach, at least in public. Surprised to learn that most X-rays just pass right through the silicon details in chips, I wonder if ultrasound might be usable?
Downside, if you’re using 1070 nm infrared light your diffraction limit is going to be something like 500 nm if I’m remembering my physics correctly, so you’re going to have issues resolving things smaller than that. (You can probably do it, but not quickly or easily; it’s research lab stuff.) So you’ll see gross structures but not every detail. But that can be enough to filter out chips that are different on the “macro” level, which can still be useful when it’s so easy to do. And because it’s Bunnie Studios, he talks about this and considers how to design chips that are resistant to malicious changes too small to resolve!
The videos are pretty magical, too. He shines visible light on a package and you can see the surface and markings, and then takes it away to leave only infrared and you can see the actual chip beneath it.