This is an excellent point, the material these components are made out of aren't designed to melt. Thinking of them like you would think of the macro level circuitry we work with doesn't really make any sense.Yes, and these are not made of alloys meant to flow at low temperatures, like solder, either. Solder is designed to have an extremely low melting point.
Again, this point is spot on. The efuse isn't burned, it has its resistance increase through electromigration.Not to mention that heat isn’t what actually blows the fuse. It’s electromigration
Probably not. Anything you would do to bypass the eFuses would almost certainly destroy the rest of the IC.Also, sure, if someone was willing to invest tens of millions of dollars just to bypass the eFuses in the Switch, it might be possible.
Possibly, but a lot of these exploits are due to design flaws in the IC. Modern chips tend to have much better eFuse design, where it may be possible to bypass, but it is becoming less likely.So again probably largely theoretical at this point but the techniques I would look to are well established and have operated at the levels necessary. I agree it is unproven, and hideously expensive/impractical, however I reckon with the above stuff in place it is a far cry from physics says no which was what I took issue with.
Another thing that is important to remember is that many computer components are actually orders of magnitude smaller than this, and they all work just fine (plus or minus some weird quantum effects that screw things up sometimes). When things get this small, a lot of the stuff that makes sense at the macro level falls apart.
Last edited by Supercool330,