ASIC Forensic Redesign

Crossfield proposes an innovative approach to re-engineer legacy ASIC and gate array devices based upon using a mechanical/plasma-etch (dry etch) and a novel 3D tomography process to extract transistor characterization and metal interconnect data. Exploiting the device performance improvements available in the latest generation of silicon technologies, Crossfield expects to generate an equivalent circuit using a modified circuits on substantially the same grid and using the same metal patterns. This re-engineering approach is particularly well suited to re-creating array type structures such as gate arrays. The forensic process can be used on standard cell based ASICs and analog arrays as well as gate arrays.