Probably many of you have already heard about the Visual6502 project - in which the craftsmen filmed the legendary 6502 processor (and then the 6800) in layers, restored the electrical circuit, and wrote a visual processor emulator in JavaScript. In addition to academic value, it also allows you to implement an absolutely accurate emulator of any computers built on these processors.



However, our compatriots decided to raise the bar higher, much higher - and began a project to restore the electrical circuitry of the Playstation 1 processor (MIPS R3051). This processor is manufactured at much thinner standards than 6502 (~ 800nm ​​against ~ 5000nm), contains 3 layers of metallization (instead of 1), and has a larger area (~ 250tys transistors versus 3.5tys at 6502) - therefore the workload promises to be at least at least 100 times more.



The goal of the project is to create an absolutely accurate Playstation 1 emulator.

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CPU picture

In order to understand the seriousness of the problem - the above photograph of the processor itself (9600x9600 pixels) is 16 times smaller in area than that used to restore the circuit. A “large” photo created from 831 frames is extremely problematic even to stitch together in one piece, because the circuit is restored by breaking the processor into several zones.



Attention, click carefully - 39 MB of JPEG is too heavy even for desktop computers!

Update: Double caution, when I opened this picture, Firefox managed to scratch Windows 8 once.

Update: Pehat Online Tile Viewer

What is being done now

3 consoles passed to me, I opened the processor and filmed the first layer of metallization. Work has now begun on the “vectorization” of the first layer of metallization — Bakari and ogamespec are doing this .







When the vectorization is completed (and it will be seen that there is nothing more to watch on the first layer) - the first layer will be etched in hydrofluoric acid, and the second and then the third metallization layers will be captured.



After that, the most delicious things will remain - processor logic, which seems to be assembled from "standard cells" (unlike 6502) - there will probably be many repetitions, which can greatly facilitate the work.



Nevertheless - a lot of work is expected - and extra hands will not hurt much. If this project is interesting to you, you are diligent, and your computer has more than 2 GB of memory - You can also participate (write to the forum ).



The project currently lives on the forum emu-russia.ru . NES (Dandy) and other reverse engineering projects are also there. And if the process itself is interesting, the video with the process of restoring the 6502 circuit and other chips can be seen here .

Update: Project website - psxdev.ru