An Advanced Integrated Circuit Analysis System

Historically, the extraction of circuitry from an integrated circuit was normally within the abilities of the average FA laboratory and could be accomplished with little more than an optical microscope and film camera. Dramatic increases in the level of integration and number of metal interconnect levels coupled with shrinking feature sizes have rendered these techniques obsolete. This paper describes techniques and methods for the fast, semi-automated extraction of detailed circuit schematics from modern, nanometer scale integrated circuits.