Chipworks, a semiconductor analysis firm, posts teardowns and chip-level reverse engineering of devices like iPhones and the Apple Pencil.
HN commenters point to it as an example of serious chip reverse engineering and for iPhone teardowns.
The proprietary companies already do this looking for hidden stuff. Mostly patent violations, though, so they can scheme some licensing revenue out of the product they're inspecting. Here's the company that does much of it:
http://www.chipworks.com/about-chipworks/overview/blog/apple-iphone-7-teardown
In that one, you'll see the other end of the process where many mobile chips will get extremely specialized. Notice this one has several RF chips instead of an integrated one to attempt to hit some size/price/energy/performance tradeoff. Plus Apple sells premium stuff whether they can put in more, nicer parts. Notice there's 10 different chips involved in just the RF front-end part. :)
Here's a nice PDF with illustrations of the RE processes themselves plus what things look like:
https://www.iacr.org/archive/ches2009/57470361/57470361.pdf
I like Fig 3 especially as a lot of people forget there's circuitry inside their PCB's rather than just on top or bottom. That cell phone has 9 layers of wiring. :)
"Asked whether NXP supplies Apple with its NFC chips for the new iPhone, the company declined to comment. Apple suppliers are sworn to secrecy."
From: http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/blog/inside-the-iphone-6-and-iphone-6-plus/
"Having now depotted the 65V10 device, we can positively identify the NFC controller as the PN548, a previously unannounced variant of the PN544 and PN547 devices by NXP. Industry sources identify this as a design that was tweaked specifically for Apple by NXP. If this is true, Apple has had access to this chip for over 18 months, since the mask date (the date appearing on the die itself and indicating the year the design was finalized) is 2012. Indeed, the die markings of the PN548 vary only slightly from those of the PN54"
well, we're hitting process node limits (5, maybe 4nm) in 10 years so I think we better stop it.
http://www.chipworks.com/media/wpmu/uploads/blogs.dir/2/files/2012/04/FIN-410K-c_branded.png
You see those little dots? Those are individual silicon atoms from one of a few fins in the gate on Intel's 22nm node.
Also, I Am A C Programmer. I Think Everything Should Be Written In C. C Is Close To The Hardware And Is Faster And Use Less Resource Compared To The JavaSlow and WebKittenz and CSS. But I Like CSS Because It Has C In It. I Am A C Programmer.
Get back to me when we have compressed ZRAM implementations and Same Page Merging everywhere to save memory on each Chrome process and each JS interpreter instance. Don't you want to do the green thing?
How does this prediction jibe with the statement that a larger sensor will always be beneficial, especially in low light?
Will smartphones be able to include much larger sensors in the future?
Is there some new physics that obviates the need for a large sensor?
The 5D Mark III has > 24x the sensor area of an iPhone 5, and most smartphones are even worse off [0] [1]
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_interchangeable-lens_video_cameras
[1] http://www.chipworks.com/blog/recentteardowns/2012/09/21/apple-iphone-5-image-sensors-and-battery/
http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/blog/inside-the-apple-lightning-cable/
Presumably Apple can tell that the USB cables are "fake" by either the exclusion of the small security bits in the cable's chip, or perhaps that large enough quantities of "fake" cables all use the same cloned chip from one original cable somewhere.
The cable may work fine, but if the OS determines that it's not a valid security chip at the end of the cable, you get the "if you electrocute yourself don't sue us" disclaimer warning.
> Plus the part about the lightning protocol makes no sense whatsoever.
Yes it does, unless the port has an analog audio channel
It's extra hardware that has to be on the dongle (at the expense of everything else) - for Audio I'm gessing it's USB https://www.chipworks.com/about-chipworks/overview/blog/systems-analysis-apple-lightning-usb-cable
> Try blind testing 10 songs or so and see if you can figure out which one is played from the adapter
Would be an interesting test, I would begin by checking the max volume allowed