Andrew Huang's Blog, page 27

That’s a Big Microscope…

I’ve often said that there are no secrets in hardware — you just need a bigger, better microscope.

I think I’ve found the limit to that statement. To give you an idea, here’s the “lightbulb” that powers the microscope:

It’s the size of a building, and it’s the Swiss Light Source. Actually, not all of that building is dedicated to this microscope, just one beamline of an X-ray synchrotron capable of producing photons at an energy of 6.5keV (X-rays) at a flux of close to a billion coherent photons per second — but still, it’s a big light bulb. It might be a while before you see one of these popping up in a hacker’s garage…err, hangar…somewhere.

The result? One can image, in 3-D and “non-destructively” (e.g., without having to delayer or etch away dielectrics), chips down to a resolution of 14.6nm.

That’s a pretty neat trick if you’re trying to reverse engineer modern silicon.

You can read the full article at Nature (“High Resolution non-destructive three-dimensional imaging of integrated circuits” by Mirko Holler et al). I’m a paying subscriber to Nature so I’m supposed to have access to the article, but at the moment, their paywall is throwing a null pointer exception. Once the paywall is fixed you can buy a copy of the article to read, but in the meantime, SciHub seems more reliable.

You get what you pay for, right?

Name that Ware June 2017

The Ware for June 2017 is shown below.

If nobody can guess this one from just the pointy end of the stick, I’ll post a photo with more context…

Winner, Name that Ware May 2017

The Ware for May 2017 is the “Lorentz and Hertz” carriage board from an HP Officejet Pro 8500. Congrats to MegabytePhreak for nailing both the make and model of the printer it came from! email me for your prize.

I found the name of the board to be endearing.

Name that Ware May 2017

The Ware for May 2017 is shown below.

This is another one where the level difficulty will depend on if I cropped enough detail out of the photo to make it challenging but not impossible. If you do figure this one out quickly, curious to hear which detail tipped you off!

Winner, Name that Ware April 2017

The Ware for April 2017 is an HP 10780A optical receiver. Congrats to Brian for absolutely nailing this one! email me for your prize.

Name that Ware, April 2017

The Ware for April 2017 is shown below.

This is a guest ware, but the contributor shall remain anonymous per request. Thank you for the contribution, you know who you are!

Winner, Name that Ware March 2017

The ware for March 2017 seems to be a Schneider ATV61 industrial variable speed drive controller. As rasz_pl pointed out, I left the sticker unredacted. I had a misgiving about hiding it fearing the ware would be unguessable, but leaving it in made it perhaps a bit too easy. Prize goes to rasz_pl for being the first to guess, email me for your prize!

Name that Ware, March 2017

The Ware for March 2017 is shown below.

I honestly have no idea what this one is from or what it’s for — found it in a junk pile in China. But I was amused by the comically huge QFP, so I snapped a shot of it.

Sorry this is a little late — been ridiculously busy prepping for the launch of a line of new products for Chibitronics, going beta (hopefully) next month.

Winner, Name that Ware February 2017

The Ware for February 2017 is a Data Harvest EcoLog.

A number of people guessed it was a datalogger of some type, but didn’t quite identify the manufacturer or model correctly. That being said, I found Josh Myer’s response an interesting read, so I’ll give the prize to him. Congrats, email me for your prize!

Looking for Summer Internship in Hardware Hacking?

Tim Ansell (mithro), who has been giving me invaluable advice and support on the NeTV2 project, just had his HDMI (plaintext) video capture project accepted into the Google Summer of Code. This summer, he’s looking for university students who have an interest in learning FPGAs, hacking on video, or designing circuits. To learn more you can check out his post at hdmi2usb.tv.

I’ve learned a lot working with Tim. I also respect his work ethic and he is a steadfast contributor to the open source community. This would be an excellent summer opportunity for any student interested in system-level hardware hacking!

Please note: application deadline is April 3 16:00 UTC.