- 2022 - Non-Euclidean Doom: what happens to a game when pi is not 3.14159… (YouTube)
We all know that the value of pi is a constant with a particular immutable value. Anyone who has done any graphical programming also knows that visual rendering relies not just on pi but trigonometry more broadly as well as other mathematical techniques. If we look into the source code of the first person shooter Doom we find that the value of pi used in the game is wrong. In this talk I will explore what happens when we subtly and not so subtly break math in the source.
- How to reverse engineer an analog chip: the TDA7000 FM radio receiver (righto.com)
Have you ever wanted to reverse engineer an analog chip from a die photo? Wanted to understand what’s inside the “black box” of an integrated circuit? In this article, I explain my reverse engineering process, using the Philips TDA7000 FM radio receiver chip as an example. This chip was the first FM radio receiver on a chip.1 It was designed in 1977—an era of large transistors and a single layer of metal—so it is much easier to examine than modern chips. Nonetheless, the TDA7000 is a non-trivial chip with over 100 transistors. It includes common analog circuits such as differential amplifiers and current mirrors, along with more obscure circuits such as Gilbert cell mixers.