Revealing design details & proving circuit patent value

In many cases, black-box analysis is not enough to reveal the design details needed to understand competitor's designs. For organizations looking to get the most from their IP, circuit analysis can provide valuable evidence of use that often cannot be found by other means.

For circuit design groups, having access to competitor's design data can provide the ”so that's how they do it” insight – ramping up learning curves for new market entrants, and staying abreast of the competition for established market players.

Circuit extraction and analysis is available through our comprehensive library of historical analyses across leading memory, circuit, mixed signal and RF/wireless devices.

 

Revealing the innovation others can't

TechInsights has invested extensively in tools, proprietary preparation methods and technical know-how to be able to perform circuit analysis and reverse engineering on a wide variety of devices.

Our technical capabilities include:

  • Delayering down to 5 nm and up to 15 layers including complex morphology structures such as finFET/trigate, low K and metal gate. Materials systems including Silicon, SiGe, SOI, GaAs and InP
  • High-precision, high-magnification and high-speed SEM imaging using custom-built, patented image acquisition systems with proprietary software for precise image assembly and alignment
  • Proprietary image recognition software tools for automation of extraction of IC wires and devices producing precise and accurate circuit schematics
  • Focused ion beam system for circuit trace and circuit edit

 

Breadth and depth of devices analyzed

From IC to system, we have you covered:

  • IC-level reverse engineering
  • Package-level
  • PCB-level
  • Circuit-level FIB signal probing (ASIC signal tracing)

TechInsights analyzes a wide variety of circuits in device applications ranging from wireless, to automotive to medical devices. Examples include:

  • Analog
  • Digital
  • Low power circuits
  • High power amplifiers
  • Memories (DRAM, NAND, emerging)
  • Applications processors
  • High speed interfaces
  • Standard cell libraries
  • RF transceivers
  • Sensors (e.g. MEMS, time of flight)
  • Display controllers
  • Power management ICs
  • Printer SOCs and processors

Circuit analysis solutions

TechInsights has over 30 years of experience working with circuit patent holders and circuit design teams to deliver analysis that supports IP and technology investment decisions. Whether mining your circuit portfolio to develop a licensing campaign and generate EoU, or providing a design team with standard cell analysis and design, we’ve got your needs covered.

Our engineering staff is experienced at interpreting circuit patents, mining portfolios and mapping patent claims to products. We understand how best to support circuit patents and leverage TechInsights’ capabilities and analysis archives for your circuit projects.

CircuitVision™ Demonstration

Easily study circuit hierarchy and analyze layout

CircuitVision™ features a powerful interface, allowing you to easily study circuit hierarchy and analyze layout through schematics or multilayer metallization including search, index and trace signals functionality.

Hierarchical schematics demonstrate the design from the block down to gate level - all linked to the original layout, showing the extracted gates and associated interconnects.

The reports feature:

  • fully reconstructed metallization with associated signal names
  • annotation of all active devices – gates, transistors, passives
  • signal tracing through layout and schematics