reverse engineering lcd display brands

The current marketplace allows hobbyists to easily find inexpensive, well-documented displays, but what if you wanted to interface with something more complicated, such as the screen on an iPod Nano 6? [Mike] has given us a detailed and insightful video showing his process for reverse engineering a device with little-to-no documentation. Here he covers the initial investigation, where one scours the web in search of any available information. In [Mike’s] example, the display uses an MIPI D-PHY interface, which he has never worked with. He learns that the MIPI Alliance will provide design specs in exchange for a signed NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and a modest $8000 fee. Nice.

[Mike] shows off some serious hardware hackery, tackling some extremely difficult soldering in order to set up a proper test platform. He then demonstrates how to use a rather awesome oscilloscope to better understand the display protocol. We found it fascinating to see the video signals displayed as waveforms, especially when he shows how it is possible to count the individual binary values. The amount of information he uncovers with the oscilloscope is nothing short of amazing, proving these little devices are more complex than they seem.

Next check the display response by changing the signal inputs and recording the response. You don’t need to record everything the display does just if it changes or not and if the display goes out. Since Pin 1 is negative voltage and no signal, and pin two is 0 voltage and no signal we can assume they are Vss. and ground.

Pin 3 and 4 are fixed high so start with Pin 5 checking one pin at a time, fix the voltage too high, or in this case 2.3 volts and observe what happens to the display.

Record the response of pin 5 then move to Pin 6 fixing it to high then observe the response on the display and record it. Continue with this process for pin 7 and pin 8. The changes on the display were funky symbols in the alphanumeric segments and random lighting up of the custom bar. You may notice the response only affects the custom bar or the alphanumeric bars make note of that because the pin data inputs may be bar specific.

Starting with Pin 3 start checking one pin at a time, fix the voltage to low or in this case 0 volts and observe what happens to the display. Pin 3 and 4 when set low shut down the display, pins 5 to 8 when set to low or 0 volts made different symbols in the alphanumeric segments, and different random lighting up of the symbols in the custom bar.

A large share of our business originates from customers who need our LCD reverse engineering services for a replacement display module. Their current supplier has discontinued the LCD series or no longer supplies Liquid Crystal Displays.

A short time ago a customer contacted our technical engineering support department and asked if we could develop a 40x2 custom character LCD display to replace a module that their previous supplier had discontinued. They required our LCD reverse engineering services to provide a drop-in equivalent including EL backlight and exact pin-out.

This display is much larger than most character LCD displays with a length of 9.8 inches and a width of 1.5 inches. Its character height is a little over ½ inch.

This large character display is a good solution for products that need to be read at a distance. This includes industrial, test and measurement, scales and many outdoor applications.

Although the standard display configuration is with an EL (Electro-luminescent) backlight, the character display can be manufactured with a LED (Light Emitting Diode) backlight.

EL backlights are AC (Alternating Current) driven which means there needs to be an inverter on the LCD or on the customers PCB to convert the DC (Direct Current) to AC. This adds cost and requires real estate on the PCB.

EL backlights now have a higher minimum order quantity of 500 displays per build. Focus is able to hold inventory in our Chandler warehouse if necessary.

EL backlights are limited in their size, when a larger backlight is required, a CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) is required. The challenge is that CCFL backlights in LCDs have been phased out.

LEDs can create hot and cold spots under the LCD glass. Most of the time the light can be ‘smoothed’ out with a diffuser, but the brighter the LED backlight is driven, the greater the chances of hot spots.

Character displays can be built in a variety of background and backlight colors. The photos below present a sampling of different options. Available colors include:

The standard operating temperature range for this character display is -20C to 60C, but it is possible to build the display as a wide temperature version that will operate from -30C to 70C.

If the display needs to operate to a lower temperature than -30C, it would be necessary to add a heater. Contact Focus Displays for help with your custom LCD heater.

The standard, stock display is built as a positive mode, but can be built as a negative mode.Positive mode means that there are dark letters on a light colored background.

Below are photos of two character displays in both positive and negative mode. Positive mode is standard, but the character LCD can be built as negative mode

The negative mode version requires the backlight to be on for the display to be readable, and is not the best solution for battery and solar powered products.

FSTN monochrome LCD displays contains a retardation film applied to the STN display to produce a black and white display. The film produces a higher contrast and wider viewing angle than STN or TN.

STN monochrome LCDs require less power and are less expensive to manufacture than TFT’s. They produce a sharper contrast then TN but less sharp then FSTN. Basic color options are Gray, Blue and Yellow/Green (most common). Other colors are available through the use of filters.

TN monochrome LCDs is the lowest cost of the three options. Contrast is not as sharp as STN and FSTN. Primary color options are black letters on a gray background. Other colors are available through the use of filters.

As mentioned at the beginning of the article. Focus Displays is able to design and build an equivalent character LCD to take the place of a discontinued display. Sometimes it may require LCD reverse engineering services.

Many times a one-time tooling or NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering) fee is required. This tooling fee is much lower for segment, character and monochrome graphic displays than it is for OLEDs (Organic light emitting diode) and TFT"s (thin-film-transistor).

The first step is for the customer to send Focus Displays the datasheets for the LCD they were using. If the customer does not have a current datasheet or there is a concern that it may not be accurate, Focus may be able to ‘estimate’ a cost from a photo.

Most LCD displays require some type of on-board controller driver processor. There are many companies that manufacture LCD IC’s. The challenge is that a controller from one company may not be 100% compatible with the controller from a second company.

Focus Display Solutions provides off-the-shelf standard displays as well as custom LCD design services to help companies replace their current LCD. Call Focus now (480-503-4295) if you need LCD reverse engineering services. Or fill out the contact form.

The LCD display control a diplay driver IC which controls both the DATA and SCAN lines. The vertical lines usually the DATA lines and the horizontal lines are the SCAN lines. My main interres was how manufacturers can make such a small edge around the active area of the display. If you think about this the usual mobile phone display has more than 1000-4000 vertical pixels, but the edge of the display is not more than a millimeter or two.

OLED display logic driving is simillar compared to LCD, but the fundamental difference the OLED pixels need current driving till for the LCD enough voltage driving.

My main focus here also was the row pixel driving circuit (scan lines), which are takes place on the very edge of the display around 1mm wide. This circuit fundamentaly work the same way as on the LCD display it has shift registers which scans through the rows one after an other. The complecity comes from the current driving which for Samsung displays has pixel driving compensation circuit as well.

To be able to see the better the tft layer of the display I had to etch away the top metal layer, which was the sub-pixel anode contacts and on the scan drive curcuit had a metal mesh shilding possibly. On the next two picture width are 100um across the image, just for scale.

But it has started me down a rabbit-hole of looking into LCD Panel technologies, as there are a lot of otherwise cool 486 laptops out there (or even older) that could possibly be capable of color, if not an Active Matrix Panel.

STN Monochrome screens typically have 14-16 pin connections on a single wire, the 14 pin units don"t have an on-board ballast on the screen for the CCFL backlight(s). Those with more pins do. I did some digging and found a article on salvaging LCDs and found a general pinout to go by that might work....typically it consists of sync for halves of the screen - https://www.instructables.com/Salvaging-Liquid-Crystal-Displays-LCDs/

DTSN Screens are similar but include 2 Latches - per the Sharp LM64C031 640x480 9.4" LCD Single Scan STN LCD Pinout below - this is a Color LCD - it has 18 pins and the Ballast for the backlights, I assume, is an external part.

The Graphics chipset is likely near the center, on the other side of the board. The connectors are right under the keyboard, and like the NEC Versa, there are THREE of them, each going to their own connectors. These three plug into a board inside the screen assembly that splits off into one 14 pin cable that runs to the LCD, and then a series of chokes and a transformer for the power to the CCFL backlight. The idea I have is if I can figure out the pinout to the graphics cables, and match the data lines up to a NLt6448AC30 - I could very likely put a TFT Active Matrix NEC panel in this laptop computer. The screw holes even seemed to match (are industrial panels standardized in hole placement?).

Hello and welcome to my first published non-Nokia cellphone LCD reverse-engineering effort. All my articles in this series focus on bringing you all of the details that you would need in order to connect a low-cost cellphone LCD to an MCU for use in your own projects. This one is no different. I will explain the pinout and the signals. I will tell you about the connector and where you can buy it and I will tell you about the controller IC and of course I will give away the complete source code driver for that controller.

The KF700 was released in 2008 and is now a discontinued model. It featured a 3.0 inch 480×240 LCD in an unusual wide-screen format with an aspect ratio of 2:1. I noticed that replacement LCDs were available cheaply for it on ebay and so I set about trying to find the schematics.

If this LCD is going to stand any chance at all of being usable by a small microcontroller then it’s going to need to have an embedded controller IC. If it has a parallel or an MDDI interface then we are out of luck because those modes need an external framebuffer and a powerful microcontroller.

It’s a 40-pin board-to-board connector and all the expected signals are there plus a few that I’m going to have to take an educated guess about. I’m going to assume that EBI2_ADDR(11) is the register select (RS or D/CX) signal. At this stage I’ve no idea what LCD_IF_MODE is going to do but it only has two states so it won’t be much effort to try both.

With a spare LCD to hand it’s not too difficult to determine the correct connector orientation, i.e. locating pin number 1. The way I do that is to find the ground connections on the schematic and then examine the connector under a microscope.

Traditionally this has always been the hardest part of any reverse engineering effort involving probing registers and trying to work out how they match up with known controllers. Thankfully though, LG have again been generous in the service manual. On page 58 it says this:

LCD controllers normally take two power supply inputs, one for the panel and one for the digital signals. In this case they appear to be bonded together on pins 40 and 39 and the phone supplies them with 2.7V.

The circuit has the advantage of requiring only a handful of very low-cost parts, two MOSFETs, a transistor and four resistors. The current-setting resistor is calculated for a current of 20mA. VLED is the input power supply, 3.3V in all my tests. If you plan to use this circuit on the STM32 F4 Discovery board then VLED should be connected to 5V. The 3V outputs from the board are not high enough to drive the backlight circuit and if you try then the display will be quite dimly lit.

Getting the slot and connector in the correct location is the most tricky part. I measured where I thought the location would be and then tested it by printing out a 1:1 paper copy of the layout, cutting out the slot and offering up the LCD to ensure that it would fit.

Here’s the finished article with the LCD fitted and (thankfully) mating correctly with the socket on the component side. Double-sided sticky pads serve to both fix the LCD in place and lift it up above the heads of the screws that are used to raise the components on the underside of the board off the table.

Firstly there’s the LCD_VSYNC_OUT pin. This one looks like it’s going to be the pulse that’s emitted at the start of the frame’s vertical blanking period to enable the microcontroller to synchronise its drawing to avoid the ‘tearing effect’, which co-incidentally is the name that this pin is often given by other controllers. Let’s jump forward a bit and see the signal that we get from this pin with a logic analyser.

The other unusual pin is the LCD_IF_MODE pin. It took me a while to catch on to this one. If you drive it low then the controller runs in 64K colour mode. If you drive it high then it runs in 262K mode. Every other controller that I’ve seen does this with a register setting and it was only when I noticed the lack of such a setting in the HX8352A datasheet that I twigged what this pin was for.

I built a number of drivers for the STM32 F1 and F4. The first one uses the FSMC to drive the LCD bus in the same way that I’ve always done in the past. This performs well, especially on the F4, and is really easy to program. You can see the example code here on github. The FSMC access mode supports 16 and 18 bit colours using the following driver names:

If you’re a regular reader of these articles then you’ll remember how I developed an optimised Arduino GPIO driver for 16-bit LCDs that achieved a very high fill-rate thanks to some assembly language trickery. Well, I’ve ported that technique to stm32plus for the F1 series of MCUs in the form of a Gpio16BitAccessMode template.

The basic idea is the same as the Arduino. Of course the assembly language is different and I have to provide specialisations of the access mode to suit the core clock and the write-cycle timing requirements of the LCD controller because, unlike the Arduino, the STM32 can drive the write-cycle faster than the controller can handle so I have to slow it down by a degree suited to the core clock speed of the target MCU. Gpio16BitAccessMode only uses raw GPIO and so it will work on devices that do not have the FSMC peripheral.

I’ve committed the driver code to the xmemtft github repository and created a release 3.0.1 that you can get from my downloads page. The highly optimised GPIO driver performs very well on this display. See for yourself in this youtube video.

The second example, flash_spi_reader, makes use of the example JPEG files programmed by the flash_spi_program example. It goes into a loop reading each image from the flash device and writing it to the KF700 LCD display.

As I could not find any information from the vendor regarding how the LCD screen of my scooter communicates with the speed controllers, and because I was curious and interested in knowing how feasible it would be to in the future integrate this LCD with a different speed controller, I decided to do this analysis on my own.

The first step was to remove and open the LCD display. While it is not the same and has no model identification on it other than the reference JPY803B in the PCB (the only thing that I know is that it belongs to the Jipinmanufacturer, sometimes also labelled as J&P or JP), it is externally very similar to the QS-S4 display. Internally the board is different and the micro-controller chip has a different identification on it.

It is a pretty versatile device, as it is adjustable and tolerates a maximum of 100 Volts of input voltage. Even though this LCD unit is normally powered from the 67.2 Volts battery supply, I was able to run it successfully at 12 Volts. Considering the specs on the electrolytic capacitors at the input, it is likely that this LCD display can be powered from a 72 Volts battery without much of a problem.

The second aspect I only spotted after cleaning the board with isopropyl alcohol and figuring out with a magnifier that I had accidentally removed a bodge solder bridge that seems to have been done because of poor PCB etching (which left a trace open). Upon testing the device without putting the bridge back in place, a few segments in one of the digits would not appear on the LCD.

While testing the LCD outside of the scooter, I measured the sensor signal varying between 0.7 and 3.8 Volts as I pressed between 0 and full throttle. The measured low value is a slightly more conservative than the value reported by the manufacturer, but the conditions (i.e. strength of the magnet and proximity to the sensor) might contribute to the differences.

Now that I knew the pin assignments, my next objective was to figure out something more about the serial communication. As such I first connected this LCD display to a 12 Volt power supply, and tapped into the TX pin of its serial port (blue wire) with an oscilloscope. I could see that as the device is turned on, it continuously tries to send messages:

Because another user had success with the similar QS-S4 LCD display (more details here), by inspecting the transmission occurring at 1200 bps, I decided to start with the same bit rate (although I could have inferred it from analysing the signal captured on the oscilloscope, I was lazy and tried that first). And, surprisingly the received frames seemed consistent in format with the messages that this user obtained with his QS-S4.

The only varying bytes (and here the display was not connected to the scooter) were byte 2, which appears to be the sequence number of the frame, and byte 5 which contains values that vary in a seemingly random pattern. Byte 7 (value 0x46) and byte 10 (value 0x02) don"t vary and are consistent (could be a coincidence) with the P08 parameter (0x46 = 70%) and the current speed setting at the time.

In a next iteration I will be tapping the communications while the LCD display is connected to the speed controllers, and try to figure out more information about the communications protocol and the meaning of the fields in each frame.

Reverse engineering is a process where a product, structure, or mechanism is disassembled or deconstructed to gather information about how the design works. As the name suggests, the design process is the opposite of a typical product engineering process. Instead of assembling a product or design part by part, with reverse engineering services, it is disassembled in a backward sequence. Some companies use reverse engineering to improve their products, reduce production costs, or make legacy replacement parts. Other firms may use reverse engineering to understand how competitors build their designs and launch competing products.

In the United States, a reverse engineer charges anywhere from $50 to $145 per hour. Engineers very rarely charge on a per-project basis because there is a probability of discovering “unknowns” during the process, especially when the objective is to determine faulty parts in an existing product. Since it is difficult to determine if the job will be easy or difficult, reverse engineers tend to charge a higher rate in the range. The cost of reverse engineering is affected by various factors, such as locations, desired output, and timeframe.

Most design engineering firms suggest that the clientship the product to their facility. The engineers will outline requirements when the project requires on-site inspections. In this instance, the client will compensate for travel costs. An in-house project completed in the firm’s facility can run from a few hundred dollars for a simple product to thousands of dollars for complex machinery with electrical and mechanical parts.

Product complexity increases the difficulty level, and so does the desired output. If a client wants a detailed report of each component in a complex product, the price can go up considerably from the introductory rate. The typical time frame for reverse engineering work on a simple product is around two weeks. An expedited project takes about one week from delivery and will add up to 30 percent of the standard pricing.

The most critical requirement for reverse engineering a product is obtaining a physical sample. Engineers will need tools and equipment to take effect apart and do the examination. The process of reverse engineering always involves disassembly. Once the outer shell of the product is removed, the internal mechanisms, including electronic components and mechanical parts, can be closely inspected. All product parts and components are documented in detail, including information about dimension, color, assembly sequence, function, specification, manufacturers, and price. Such a method allows engineers to figure out the blueprint of a product.

When a mere fraction of a millimeter is considered consequential on the assembly or overall product function, 3D scanning technology comes in handy. A single component is scanned multiple times, each from a different angle, to provide a view from every possible direction. The scanner collects the component’s geometric data to redraw a realistic 3D model. Some 3D scanners used for reverse engineering purposes include CMM (coordinate measuring machines) and structured light digitizers. Industrial CT scanners, the same technology employed in medical imaging, can also be used.

CT scanners use X-ray equipment to display the scanned object’s internal and external 3D representations. The automatically reconstructed 3D asset may not be perfect, but the most important thing is that all the essential geometric data are successfully collected and compiled. An experienced AutoCAD drafting and design specialist can further refine the image in CAD software by removing visual imperfections. Refinements should not be a problem if they don’t alter component specifications. Scanning, taking measurements, and final retouching are repeated as many times as necessary to cover all the components used in the product.

The exact process applies when the project involves a PCB for reverse engineering. The electronic prototype and design expert will examine, identify, and uninstall various circuit board components. A typical board contains resistors, capacitors, transistors, inductors, transformers, sensors, diodes, and sometimes LEDs. Each component has a unique specification, which determines features and affects performance. Before deconstruction starts, engineers take close-up pictures of both sides of the board to document the layout and composition.

For reverse engineering, it is necessary to take note of the board’s technical details, including but not limited to the materials, trace patterns, wire/lead insulation gap, trace width, and safety certifications. PCB can be recreated as a digital (simulated) file to test the performance and capacity without building a physical board. Most designs can be modified in a simulated environment to test different components and usage scenarios.

Product concept designers or manufacturers utilize reverse engineering to gain in-depth knowledge about how something works. If done correctly, the information gathered during the operation helps create a digital copy of every part, mechanism, and assembly process. It is like having a blueprint of a product. Some of the most common purposes or benefits of reverse engineering are as follows:

Reverse engineering is most commonly associated with failure analysis. If or when a product fails, the easiest and most comprehensive way to determine the issue is by taking it apart. Once the parts are disassembled and examined, it becomes easier to determine where the problem is, how it happens, and why the issue arises. To repair a faulty product, you must know what’s wrong with the design in the first place.

When reverse engineering is done using CAD software, it is possible to test product performance through a simulation program. A simulation analyzes how a product performs under various conditions, such as extreme heat or cold, careless handling, exposure to water, or normal usage. Performance reports based on simulated runs help inform how to fix the underlying problem.

The problem is that the manufacturer no longer produces the component; it has been discontinued, so a custom-made job is in order. Custom manufacturing is not complex when performed by the right professionals with the right equipment, assuming you know which part is faulty. Otherwise, the machine has to be taken apart to determine the issue and pinpoint the culprit. In short, you need reverse engineering.

The reverse engineering cost can be more expensive than purchasing a whole new machine, depending on the machine’s size and complexity. The real value of the undertaking is the documentation. Once reverse-engineered, the factory can use the information indefinitely and build replacements for other components as often as necessary. In this situation, it is best to work with a reverse engineering company that can custom-build mechanical components.

Reverse engineering for design improvement does not merely aim to create better components or find product faults. The exact process is employed to simplify the assembly process, reduce any excess by removing unnecessary parts, and ultimately reduce manufacturing costs without sacrificing usability and features. This is where DFM services come in very handy.

On a much larger scale, reverse engineering helps determine whether an entire system comprised of multiple independent machines—such as in an industrial process—is working at its best. The flow of a manufacturing operation in a factory depends on how well each machine runs. When equipment underperforms, efficiency will suffer, and an excessive load is placed on the interconnected system.

Large-scale reverse engineering treats and examines the system as a single unit. It is much more complex, time-consuming, and costly than machine disassembly, but the virtual copy can help a company prevent unexpected loss or extensive damage due to one weak link in the chain.

Bryon has been involved in the electronics industry for 40 years. The first couple decades were as an engineer and marketer at all levels of management, working for MMI, AMD, Cypress, Altera, Actel, Teja Technologies, and Vector Fabrics. His industry focus was on PLDs/FPGAs, EDA, multicore processing, networking, and software analysis. He was an editor and freelance ghostwriter for 12 years, writing for EE Journal and Semiconductor Engineering. His editorial coverage added AI, security, MEMS and sensors, IoT, automotive, and semiconductor processing to his portfolio. He has a BSEE from UC Berkeley and an MSEE from Santa Clara University. Away from work, Bryon enjoys music, photography, travel, cooking, hiking, and languages.

Now a senior analyst at TechInsights, he generally works in analog electronics, specializing in CMOS imagers and displays. His work is in both Intellectual Property and the technical analysis of current products. He has authored several technical papers and is the inventor of numerous CMOS imager patents.

Wilson has been with TechInsights over 10 years, and currently holds the position of Senior Process Analyst, where he has specialized in technical structural and material analysis of CMOS image sensors. Wilson’s experience at TechInsights encompasses other areas, such as logic ICs, memories and IC packages. Additionally, he provides technical support for patent licensing and patent evaluation based on reverse engineering. Wilson has over 35 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, and during his professional career he worked in several countries (Brazil, Germany and Canada) in a variety of roles including process analysis, process engineering, reliability and failure analysis, where he gained a deep understanding and knowledge of semiconductor devices fabrication processes and semiconductor device physics. Wilson has an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Carleton University, Canada.

Radu Trandafir is a mobile RF subject matter expert within the Technology Office at TechInsights. Radu’s background includes more than 25 years in designing, engineering, analyzing, and reverse engineering hardware and software systems.

John Sullivan is a Senior IP Solutions Analyst with TechInsights. His more than 20 years within the organization – first with Chipworks, now TechInsights – have seen him in several different roles, from Circuit & Patent Analyst, Engineering Circuit Manager, to the IP side of the house, and into his current position.

His experience has made him a well-rounded patent analyst and reverse engineering professional. His current role involves planning and executing programs that help TechInsights clients leverage their intellectual property.

Radu Trandafir is a mobile RF subject matter expert within the Technology Office at TechInsights. Radu’s background includes more than 25 years in designing, engineering, analyzing, and reverse engineering hardware and software systems.

Dr. Russell has over 15 years’ experience in wide bandgap (WBG) device fabrication and characterization. He received his PhD in Electronic Engineering in 2013 from the University of Glasgow with a thesis entitled ‘High Performance Hydrogen-Terminated Diamond Field Effect Transistors’ and demonstrated what was at the time the highest frequency diamond transistor reported. Continuing in academia, he researched high voltage silicon carbide devices, and successfully demonstrated 3.3 kV and 10 kV variants.

Dr. Eugene Hsu provides Technical Support for patent licensing and patent evaluation based on reverse engineering, as well as technical structural and material analysis semiconductor devices packages. He has over 15 years of academic and professional experience in semiconductor fabrication, material analysis, and reverse engineering, and is knowledgeable in areas spanning semiconductors, device physics, optics, and photonics, as well as electrical engineering.

Eugene received his Ph.D. in Engineering Physics in 2012 from McMaster University, Canada. Since starting at TechInsights in 2012, he has also gained skill in sample preparation for process and circuit analysis. He has authored various analysis reports including Teardown and Functional Analysis of Consumer Products, Device Fabrication Processes of Processors, Image Sensors, Memory, and MeM Devices. He currently works with the IP team, providing technical analysis and reviews for patent portfolio support.

Throughout his academic and professional career, he has gained familiarity with analytics techniques including and not limited to SEM, TEM, AFM, AES, SIMS, EDS, EELS, etc., and continues to employ a combination of these techniques in reverse engineering related analysis.

Reza joined TechInsights in 2021, with over a decade experience in renewable energy systems such as Li batteries, fuel cells, water electrolyzers, and supercapacitors. He has extensive experience in scientific instruments including electrochemical stations, cameras, spectrographs, and surface-probing microscopes. In his current role at TechInsights, he conducts reverse engineering/process analysis on Li batteries, power management/generating as well as logic devices.

Rajesh Krishnamurthy is a senior analyst for TechInsights, an Ottawa, Canada-based reverse engineering company. TechInsights analyses a broad range of devices, giving Rajesh a unique overview of what technologies make into the real world of semiconductor production.

Rajesh graduated in 1998 with PhD in Materials Engineering from University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada. He has more than 20 years of experience working as an analyst, focusing on semiconductor process development, and R&D of semiconductor materials and devices. He joined the TechInsights team in 2006.

Alexandra Noguera is a Senior Logic Analyst at TechInsights where she provides analysis and technical support for competitive intelligence on reverse engineering of advanced CMOS technology nodes, leading SoC design and standard cells/layout analysis, and identifying IP blocks for SoC floorplan.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Carleton University, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and 10 years of experience working in semiconductor circuit analysis. Alexandra joined Chipworks (now Techinsights) in 2012.

Jeongdong Choe has a Ph.D. in electronic engineering and 30 years’ experience in semiconductor process integration for DRAM, (V) NAND, SRAM, and logic devices. A Ph.D. in Electronics (Semiconductor) from Sungkyunkwan University, he also holds master’s and bachelor’s Degrees in Materials Engineering (Metallurgical) from Yonsei University. His background includes positions as a Team Lead in R&D for SK-Hynix and Samsung, where he optimized process and device architectures with state-of-the-art technologies for mass production.

Jun Lu is a Senior Process Analyst at TechInsights where she provides technical support for patent licensing and patent evaluation based on reverse engineering, as well as technical structural and material analysis of semiconductor devices and packages. She has over 20 years of professional experience in semiconductor manufacturing, R&D and process development, and reverse engineering, TEM microscopy and material analysis.

She joined Semiconductor Insights’ (now TechInsights) state-of-art reverse engineering lab in 2004 de-processing semiconductor devices layer by layer and routinely performing measurements and materials analyses on semiconductor devices through SEM and TEM imaging, SEM-EDS, TEM-EDS, and TEM-EELS.

She has been involved in the process and structural analysis of memory devices, advanced logic CMOS devices, MEMS devices, LCD display panels, LEDs, and multiple device packages. She also provides technical evaluation and rating of patents and analysis of device fabrication processes and structures to provide evidence of use for clients. Since year 2017 she has been responsible for creating graphical emulation of process flows using CAD tools for memory devices.

Reverse-Engineering of existing circuit boards has been a specialty of mine for more than 23 years. Working with multiple clients, and for various companies in that time, I have performed duties ranging from generating schematics for simple LCD Display boards, to developing complete test program suites for complex multi-processor CPU boards.

With a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering Technology, my understanding of circuit design allows me to break-down schematics into easy to follow functional blocks, making the circuits more accessible and easier to understand for technicians or other individuals with widely varying levels of skill.

Engineer Guarav Singh has released an open-source SPI to MIPI DSI bridge, designed to allow a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to drive a salvaged 1.54" LCD display panel without any closed-source code.

"As display technology is advancing, high resolution LCD/TFT LCD panel are becoming more common," Singh writes. "With higher resolution comes nicer picture quality, rich content with higher bandwidth requirement to transfer that content from the display controller to the display it self. Gone those days of 8-bit parallel bus, now MIPI [Display Serial Interface] is becoming more and more common with nice display. Yes one can still buy parallel or LVDS interface display. But as one try to move towards nicer quality display MIPI is becoming dominant. Basic MIPI DPHY can achieve 1Gps per-lane with MIPI DPHY V2.5 you can go up to 6Gbps Max total bandwidth."

While most commercial SoC designs include a MIPI DSI block for driving displays, they"re typically based on proprietary closed-source hardware. Singh"s detailed write-up goes into the creation of an open-source equivalent, written in the Verilog hardware description language and ready to run on an FPGA - complete with full source, released under the GNU General Public Licence 3.0 copyleft licence.

Using a display salvaged from an old iPod, and a bit of fine-pitch soldering, Singh was able to reverse-engineer the panel and write some Verilog to implement the MIPI DSI signal. Following the protoboard work to prove the concept, Singh created a PCB which sits between the Lattice Semiconductor FPGA development board and the display panel - making installation as simple as inserting a ribbon cable into a socket. Finally, Singh developed a PIC32-based host adapter which provides an SPI interface over USB, plus a matching Qt5-based GUI application, to allow a host device to control the display via the FPGA.