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PRODID:-//GridMind//NONSGML GridCalendar 0.9.577 2013-12-03 17:08 +0100//E
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BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:realraum Grid Calendar-ba60f4c3f99b69e96569dcaa976cb7c3-1718@grical.re
 alraum.at
DTSTART:20241219T190500Z
DTEND:20241219T200000Z
CATEGORIES:realraum,talk,r3talk,ics,reverseengineering,hardware
CLASS:PUBLIC
DESCRIPTION:Welcome to the first of a regular monthly series of small talk
 s in realraum.\nThe focus being on low-entry but hopefully high-value know
 ledge sharing either in form of a talk or show+tell.\n \n\n\nProprietary s
 ilicon ICs and dubious marketing claims? Let's fight those with a microsco
 pe!\n\n\n\nCustom silicon chips are black boxes that hold many secrets\, l
 ike internal ROMs\, security features and audio DSP algorithms. How does o
 ne start reverse engineer them? Let's look at the basics of silicon revers
 e engineering\, what gate array chips are\, and how some tooling can gener
 ate Verilog code automatically from a die shot.\n\nA digital synthesizer f
 rom 1986 was completely shrouded in mystery and dubious marketing claims. 
 Being that old\, eventually every working unit will break\, leaving us wit
 h the no info about its inner workings. I could not accept this\, so I dec
 ided to get into silicon reverse engineering. By dissolving its undocument
 ed custom chips into acid and looking at them through a microscope\, I was
  able to get an understanding of what was going on internally\, to be able
  to preserve it and emulate it in the future.\n\nThis is possible because 
 lot of custom silicon chips from that era (80s and 90s) are of the "gate a
 rray" type: a grid-like structure that contains thousands of digital logic
  gates. By looking at them closely we can understand what those gates do\,
  and by following the wiring between them we can reconstruct the entire sy
 stem. This method allowed people to understand and recreate perfect emulat
 ions of arcade games\, sound chips\, security ICs and more.\n\nIn this tal
 k I want to tell my journey into silicon reverse engineering from my persp
 ective of a complete beginner and software guy\, and what I learned in the
  process. I will go through the different kinds of custom chips\, how they
  look under a microscope\, their different parts\, what can be easily reve
 rse engineered and what can not. Those chips do not only contain logic\, b
 ut also RAM and ROM parts\, and knowing how to identify them can give clue
 s when looking at the logic is too complicated. Sometimes a chip can be co
 mpletely understood even without knowing that a MOSFET is.\n\nI will also 
 cover the process I used for reverse engineer them\, some techniques that 
 worked and some that didn't\, and some tools I built to automatically extr
 act mask ROMs and generate Verilog code from die shots.\n\n\nby giulioz
DTSTAMP:20241216T154321
GEO:47.0654887055\;15.450553894
LOCATION:realraum\, Brockmanngasse 15\, 8010 Graz
SUMMARY: Proprietary silicon ICs and dubious marketing claims? Let's fight
  those with a microscope! 
URL:http://grical.realraum.at/e/show/1718/
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