| ▲ | Joel_Mckay an hour ago | ||||||||||||||||
Practically No, the stack-up of metal layers often hides the gate structures underneath, and the billions of process cells may not all be the same. Theoretically Yes, as an ion-beam-mill and electron-microscope combination machine can slice up semiconductors layer-by-layer. Given these machines can often also give precise x-ray analysis material data, the exact makeup of the chip can be extracted by competitors given enough time. =3 | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | saltcured an hour ago | parent [-] | ||||||||||||||||
Now you're making me imagine some kind of 3D-scanning, confocal x-ray fluorescent spectroscope. Or maybe some kind of hybrid of x-ray microtomography and spectroscopic analysis all in one. But, maybe the energies involved would be about the same destructive power as some microtome slicing technique... | |||||||||||||||||
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