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Analyzing the vintage 8008 processor from die photos: its unusual counters

The revolutionary Intel 8008 microprocessor is 45 years old today (March 13, 2017), so I figured it’s time for a blog post on reverse-engineering its internal circuits. One of the interesting things about old computers is how they implemented things in unexpected ways, and the 8008 is no exception. Compared to modern architectures, one unusual […]

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Inside the 74181 ALU chip: die photos and reverse engineering

What’s inside a TTL chip? To find out, I opened up a 74181 ALU chip, took high-resolution die photos, and reverse-engineered the chip.1 Inside I found several types of gates, implemented with interesting circuitry and unusual transistors. The 74181 was a popular chip in the 1970s used to perform calculations in the arithmetic-logic unit (ALU) of

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Hot rods keep the die cool

Quad Flatpack No leads (QFN) packages offer at least one advantage over Ball Grid Array (BGA) packages: because the electrical connections are partly made via solder lands on the side of the component visual inspection of solder joints and repairing them is easier. Thermally enhancing a package for power applications can be done with a

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