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Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

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Re: Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

#81

Post by MomsAVoxell »

Aurornis wrote: post #78
MomsAVoxell wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your pessimism belies a distinct lack of experience, if not also a dearth of imagination. Harnesses for such things are not cheap, nor are they something you can just order from Reichelt. But, I assure you, there are reverse engineering labs in the world that can do this. There are technicians who think nothing whatsoever of de-soldering a BGA and using microscopes to rig things up. They do it before lunch, even. The…

> Your pessimism belies a distinct lack of experience, if not also a dearth of imagination. You keep missing the point and trying to insult my experience in the process. We're talking about a university student and CPU opcodes. The whole side story about probing the chip is completely irrelevant. This is a software task. > But, I assure you, there are reverse engineering labs in the world that can do this. We're talk…

Maybe your university students aren't as well-funded as my university students, ever thought of that, huh? Maybe your universities are lagging behind the state of the art in the rest of the civilized world. Maybe, you just don't know enough about this subject, actually.

>I'm talking about the fixturing required to actually probe those pins.

This just isn't as impossible as you claim. And, there are plenty of reasons to do it.

Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't mean someone else hasn't already actually done it.

Re: Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

#82

Post by RetroTechie »

(A crash course in how chips get made)

That paragraph + illustration is one of the simplest, concise, easy-to-grasp descriptions of IC design process I've come across. Nice!

Now the reverse: what I'd really love is a free (libre) automated toolset to go from IC die shot(s) -> transistors+interconnects -> gate-level schematic (logic gates & flipflops). Person interested in RE a chip's function can take it from there.

To me, the whole "here's a section of the die photo" to "that's an n-bit adder" etc step is like black magic. Not to mention extremely tedious.

Get that to a higher-level view easy, and it would be much more doable to work out function of each element.

Re: Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

#83

Post by [deleted] »

rzzzt wrote: post #33
inigyou wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before that there was, and still is, IDA Pro. Works largely the same but costs a lot, on the order of $1000/seat/year. Useless for hobbyists unless pirated, but reasonable if it's your job. Probably had academic discounts.

Also a few free-but-cut-down versions like 5 (which still recognizes MS-DOS executables). I'm not going to recommend downloading it from any of the locations mentioned here but it's out there: https://reverseengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/19179...

[deleted]

Re: Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

#84

Post by mikeyouse »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #80
Aurornis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You might be thinking that the hobby-level logic analyzers you're used to, are what folks who are serious about doing this kind of work would be using. Just, no. No I'm not. I'm referring to the logic analyzers and probes, and fixturing that would be necessary to probe something like this. It's not as simple as saying "wouldn't be cheap". I'm saying it's virtually impossible for a university student to do for fun w…

Your extreme claims that "nobody is going to do that", while I have actually seen people doing exactly that in modern universities and other reverse engineering institutions, just renders your stubborn know-best boring. Yes, people do this. Yes, it is a lot of tedious work. PCIe signaling is not a panacea - there are reasons to fuzz like this. I've also seen folks break out a tunneling electron microscope to dig deep…

One other bit in support is that the person you’re replying to read “university student” but OP said “Post-Doc” which I guess technically is a student at a university but a post-doc EE is an exceptionally skilled and specialized role who’s likely been working on that specific problem for 8+ years.

Re: Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

#85

Post by Marciplan »

aappleby wrote: post #66

I reverse engineered the Game Boy from pictures of the die - https://github.com/aappleby/metroboy - so yes, it's totally doable. It is also incredibly tedious and frustrating. Not sure if that gives me an advantage in this challenge, but I have too many things to do already. :D

seeing this was done 5yrs ago. Is this easily recreatable by an AI model nowadays? If so, what does it make you feel?

Re: Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

#86

Post by QuiEgo »

zoenolan wrote: post #21

I thought the article was going to be about how people scan chips Rapid Chip Reverse Engineering Using Laser, Focused ion beams, and Scanning electron microscope https://academic.oup.com/mam/article/30/Supplement_1/ozae044... FIBs are also used to test modifications before doing a respin. I'm still in awe that matter can be manipulated so precisely

FIB is awesome but there’s nothing easy about it, and the success rates are not super great.

Re: Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

#87

Post by MomsAVoxell »

mikeyouse wrote: post #84
MomsAVoxell wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your extreme claims that "nobody is going to do that", while I have actually seen people doing exactly that in modern universities and other reverse engineering institutions, just renders your stubborn know-best boring. Yes, people do this. Yes, it is a lot of tedious work. PCIe signaling is not a panacea - there are reasons to fuzz like this. I've also seen folks break out a tunneling electron microscope to dig deep…

One other bit in support is that the person you’re replying to read “university student” but OP said “Post-Doc” which I guess technically is a student at a university but a post-doc EE is an exceptionally skilled and specialized role who’s likely been working on that specific problem for 8+ years.

I mean, there are universities with hardware reverse engineering labs in operation since the very, very beginning of hardware.

I’m only persisting with the argument because the myopia is revealing.

Re: Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

#88

Post by KellyCriterion »

Aurornis wrote: post #69
MomsAVoxell wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many laymen confuse logic analyzers with oscilloscopes. Don't take it personally - the person you responded to is clearly not a native English speaker. You absolutely can reverse chips with logic analysis. It is big business in some parts of the world.

> You absolutely can reverse chips with logic analysis. You are not going to reverse engineer a GPU with a logic analyzer and by applying currents to pins. You could replace oscilloscope with logic analyzer in the comment above and nothing changes. It’s a fantasy story. The GPU I/O is high speed PCIe and memory buses. If you want to explore the chip you connect it to a PCIe host and use the host. Connecting logic ana…

Err how would one even connect an oscilloscope to these chips, since there are only a few pins but and is digital information in very high speed?

Re: Can you reverse engineer an ASIC?

#89

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #81
Aurornis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your pessimism belies a distinct lack of experience, if not also a dearth of imagination. You keep missing the point and trying to insult my experience in the process. We're talking about a university student and CPU opcodes. The whole side story about probing the chip is completely irrelevant. This is a software task. > But, I assure you, there are reverse engineering labs in the world that can do this. We're talk…

Maybe your university students aren't as well-funded as my university students, ever thought of that, huh? Maybe your universities are lagging behind the state of the art in the rest of the civilized world. Maybe, you just don't know enough about this subject, actually. >I'm talking about the fixturing required to actually probe those pins. This just isn't as impossible as you claim. And, there are plenty of reasons…

Upvoting this purely because I want to see you two argue more hahahhaha
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