Reminds me of the breakdown of the Mifare Classic RFID cards, but on a much larger scale. They took cross-sectional images of the circuits, then used a Matlab script to turn the images back into simulated circuits. Then they performed cryptanalysis on it! Papers and video: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/track/Hacking/23... The video is long but entertaining :)

Edit: if the torrents aren't being seeded anymore, you can watch the video here http://www.podcast.tv/video-episodes/24c3-2378-mifare-282189... or download from ftp://media.ccc.de/congress/24C3/matroska/24c3-2378-en-mifare_security.mkv