neat photos of IC failures in high-mag microscopes

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When designing chips in a microfab, scientists check out the designs using electron microscopes and other stuch high mag microscopes. Sometimes the failure images look like evil gingerbread men, or singing frogs, etc . . .

at the IEEE's 15th International Symposium on the Physical and Failure Analysis of Integrated Circuits, in Singapore, participants brought pictures of some of the odd, cute, and even scary things they've found during chip examinations and autopsies. The ten winning pictures, evidently selected as much for evocativeness as instructiveness, follow.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/6433/1