Reverse-engineering a vintage power supply chip from die photos

Re:Reverse-engineering a vintage power supply chip from die ... by kens on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @02:36PM (#28225365)

I've looked at more modern power supplies like a Macbook charger [1]. One difference is they have power factor correction in the frontend. Another difference is they use more advanced power supply topologies, such as a resonant converter. Also, efficiency is a bigger concern.

As far as the chips themselves, I haven't looked at a modern power supply controller chip, but I've looked at other power chips [2]. The biggest difference is they are CMOS instead of bipolar. They are also much more complex and dense, so I can't reverse engineer them with my microscope.

[1] https://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surp...

[2] https://www.righto.com/2020/05/tiny-transformer-inside-decap...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Reverse-engineering a vintage power supply chip from die ... by bigiain on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @09:34PM (#28229350)

> They are also much more complex and dense, so I can't reverse engineer them with my microscope.

What would be the path forward if you chose to try an do that? A different light frequency microscope? Or something way more complex and expensive?

(Or would having the imaging capability not matter because the complexity is too high even if you could see it properly?)

[ Parent | on HN ]