News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if they are open source?. Parent comment

Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by mschuster91 on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @05:09AM (#25044310)
> I always thought those were only half for process control and half to force you to leave a blank spot on your mask where they could pattern in nasty additional circuitry on a few wafers.

Holy fucking hell. So that is what the comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24919073 might have alluded to?

Is there any way to take a random TSMC-fabbed chip and inspect this region, or are the feature sizes too small?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by octoberfranklin on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @05:20AM (#25044374)
> So that is what the comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24919073 might have alluded to?

Oh, no, it gets much worse. Take the blue pill, turn back from this rabbit-hole now; Here Be Dragons.

[ Parent | on HN ]