Silicon die teardown: a look inside an early 555 timer chip

Re:Silicon die teardown: a look inside an early 555 timer chip by showerst on Monday January 24, 2022 @01:24PM (#30061684)

Any particular favorite book or course recommendations for learning about vintage (or current) IC design? I’m not looking to go into the field, just programmer who thinks being able to puzzle out things like die shots is really cool.

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Re:Silicon die teardown: a look inside an early 555 timer chip by kens on Monday January 24, 2022 @01:47PM (#30062052)

I stick to ICs from the 1970s and 1980s; after that, things get too hard to understand. Books from that era provide a reasonable description.

For digital circuits, Mead and Conway's Introduction to VLSI Systems is a good source of information. It's available online: https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/VLSIText/VLSITe... (the link seems to be down right now, though.)

For analog circuits, the book "The Art of Analog Layout" is good if you can find a cheap used copy. The designer of the 555 timer wrote an interesting book "Designing Analog Chips" which I found very interesting. It is available online: http://www.designinganalogchips.com/

There's also an online tutorial on IC reverse engineering: http://siliconzoo.org/tutorial.html

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Re:Silicon die teardown: a look inside an early 555 timer chip by hackerlytest on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:20PM (#30066639)

Wow, thanks for the book links. I remember the VLSI book from my uni curriculum.

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Re:Silicon die teardown: a look inside an early 555 timer chip by showerst on Monday January 24, 2022 @02:40PM (#30062820)

Thanks so much!

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