Illuminating silicon chips to detect tampering @bunniestudios
Andrew ‘bunnie’ Huang is working on IRIS (Infra-Red, in-situ), a multidisciplinary project to give people a tangible reason to trust their hardware.
In applying himself, bunnie provides some tips on how iterate to come up with solutions. In this case, design and techniques for iterating, to zero in on workable hardware.
Previously, I introduced the context of IRIS, and touched on my general methods for learning and exploring. This post will cover how I arrived at the final design for the light source featured in the above machine. It is structured as a case study on the general methods for learning that I covered in my previous post, so if you see foofy statements about “knowing it” or “being ignorant of it”, that’s where it comes from.
However, in the process of reading articles about laser scanning optics, I stumbled upon Fritzchens Fritz’s Flickr feed (you can browse a slideshow of his feed, above), where he uses a CMOS imager (i.e. a Sony mirrorless camera) to do bulk imaging of silicon from the backside, with an IR lamp as a light source. This is a perfect example of the “I am ignorant of it” stage of learning: I had negative emotions when I first saw it, because I had previously invested so much effort in laser scanning.
After getting past “I am ignorant of it” and “I am aware of it”, I arrived at the stage of “I know of it”. It turns out Fritz’s technique is a great idea, and much better than anything I had previously thought of. So, I abandoned my laser scanner plan and tried to move to the stage of “tried it out” by copying Fritzchen Fritz’s setup.
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