> I always thought those were only half for process control and half to force yo... | Hacker News

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mschuster91 on Nov 10, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care...

> I always thought those were only half for process control and half to force you to leave a blank spot on your mask where they could pattern in nasty additional circuitry on a few wafers.

Holy fucking hell. So that is what the comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24919073 might have alluded to?

Is there any way to take a random TSMC-fabbed chip and inspect this region, or are the feature sizes too small?

octoberfranklin on Nov 10, 2020 [–]

> So that is what the comment in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24919073 might have alluded to?

Oh, no, it gets much worse. Take the blue pill, turn back from this rabbit-hole now; Here Be Dragons.

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