Category Archives: ic

Popping the Top of A Ceramic IC

Posted on by

If you’ve ever wanted to open up an IC to see what’s inside it, you have a few options. The ceramic packages with a metal lid will succumb to a hobby knife. That’s easy. The common epoxy packages are harder, and usually require a mix of mechanical milling and the use of an acid (like fuming nitric, for example). [Robert Baruch] wanted to open a fully ceramic package so he used the “cooler” part of a MAP gas torch. If you like seeing things get hot in an open flame, you might enjoy the video below.

Spoiler alert: [Robert] found …read more

Continue reading Popping the Top of A Ceramic IC→

Top U.S. intelligence official: Media is wrong about low morale

Posted on by

The issue of sinking morale within the U.S. intelligence community is a myth fabricated by the media, said a top U.S. intelligence official who spoke Thursday at the National Press Club. “I am in the intelligence community, I have spent time in the FBI, in NCSC now and CIA, and I don’t see a dip […]

The post Top U.S. intelligence official: Media is wrong about low morale appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Top U.S. intelligence official: Media is wrong about low morale→

Top U.S. intelligence official: Media is wrong about low morale

Posted on by

The issue of sinking morale within the U.S. intelligence community is a myth fabricated by the media, said a top U.S. intelligence official who spoke Thursday at the National Press Club. “I am in the intelligence community, I have spent time in the FBI, in NCSC now and CIA, and I don’t see a dip […]

The post Top U.S. intelligence official: Media is wrong about low morale appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Top U.S. intelligence official: Media is wrong about low morale→

Software vulnerability disclosures by NSA will continue under Trump, officials say

Posted on by

The disclosure process that governs how and when federal agencies should tell tech firms about flawed computer code is in no immediate danger of termination under the Trump administration, current and former U.S. officials said. Flawed code by its very nature offers vulnerabilities that can be targeted by hackers. Knowledge of these vulnerabilities — especially those […]

The post Software vulnerability disclosures by NSA will continue under Trump, officials say appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Software vulnerability disclosures by NSA will continue under Trump, officials say→

8008 Exposed

Posted on by

[Ken Shirriff] is no stranger to Hackaday. His latest blog post is just the kind of thing we expect from him: a tear down of the venerable 8008 CPU. We suspect [Ken’s] earlier post on early CPUs pointed out the lack of a good 8008 die photo. Of course, he wasn’t satisfied to just snap the picture. He also does an analysis of the different constructs on the die.

Ever wonder why the 8008 ALU is laid out in a triangle shape? In all fairness, you probably haven’t, but you might after you look at the photomicrograph of the die. …read more

Continue reading 8008 Exposed→

Ken Shirriff Takes Us Inside the IC, For Fun

Posted on by

[Ken Shirriff] has seen the insides of more integrated circuits than most people have seen bellybuttons. (This is an exaggeration.) But the point is, where we see a crazy jumble of circuitry, [Ken] sees a riddle to be solved, and he’s got a method that guides him through the madness.

In his talk at the 2016 Hackaday SuperConference, [Ken] stepped the audience through a number of famous chips, showing how he approaches them and how you could do the same if you wanted to, or needed to. Reading an IC from a photo is not for the faint of heart, …read more

Continue reading Ken Shirriff Takes Us Inside the IC, For Fun→

Silicon Wafer Transfer Machine Is Beautifully Expensive

Posted on by

There’s nothing more freeing than to be an engineer with no perceptible budget in sight. [BrendaEM] walks us through a teardown of a machine that was designed under just such a lack of constraint. It sat inside of a big box whose job was to take silicon wafers in on one side and spit out integrated circuits on the other.

[BrendaEM] never really divulges how she got her hands on something so expensive that the engineer could specify “tiny optical fiber prisms on the end of a precision sintered metal post” as an interrupt solution for the wafer.  However, we’re …read more

Continue reading Silicon Wafer Transfer Machine Is Beautifully Expensive→