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The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

zdnet.com

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Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#11

Post by karmicthreat »

catern wrote: post #10

Are these "fakes" mostly broken or nonfunctional chips? Or are they mostly chips produced by third party factories without the license for the chip IP? If it's the latter, I think that would be something to welcome - the official manufacturer can't make enough, so others will. Whether that's legal or not, it's good for the chip buyer. (And chips should be open source anyway, so I don't much care about them violating…

Those unlicensed chips can be even worse than just a plainly nonfunctional chip. FTDI had this issue a few years back and the breaks were more subtle.

If I'm paying for a specific chip, I want all the reliability and QC I expect at that price.

Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#12

Post by deelowe »

catern wrote: post #10

Are these "fakes" mostly broken or nonfunctional chips? Or are they mostly chips produced by third party factories without the license for the chip IP? If it's the latter, I think that would be something to welcome - the official manufacturer can't make enough, so others will. Whether that's legal or not, it's good for the chip buyer. (And chips should be open source anyway, so I don't much care about them violating…

There is no way to be certain that those chips will comply with the specs and they will taint the supply chain. Traceability is extremely important in the hardware business.

Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#13

Post by makomk »

karmicthreat wrote: post #11
catern wrote: post #10

Are these "fakes" mostly broken or nonfunctional chips? Or are they mostly chips produced by third party factories without the license for the chip IP? If it's the latter, I think that would be something to welcome - the official manufacturer can't make enough, so others will. Whether that's legal or not, it's good for the chip buyer. (And chips should be open source anyway, so I don't much care about them violating…

Those unlicensed chips can be even worse than just a plainly nonfunctional chip. FTDI had this issue a few years back and the breaks were more subtle. If I'm paying for a specific chip, I want all the reliability and QC I expect at that price.

If I remember rightly, one of the big differences of the FTDI fakes in common ciruclation was that some of the advanced functionality worked and behaved according to the spec. This happens from time to time... the NRF28L01+ radio clones are incompatible overr the air with the original because they followed the datasheet, which was wrong.

Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#14

Post by catern »

deelowe wrote: post #12
catern wrote: post #10

Are these "fakes" mostly broken or nonfunctional chips? Or are they mostly chips produced by third party factories without the license for the chip IP? If it's the latter, I think that would be something to welcome - the official manufacturer can't make enough, so others will. Whether that's legal or not, it's good for the chip buyer. (And chips should be open source anyway, so I don't much care about them violating…

There is no way to be certain that those chips will comply with the specs and they will taint the supply chain. Traceability is extremely important in the hardware business.

That may be true - I'm not a hardware engineer. But it's interesting that that sounds exactly like the propaganda that proprietary software vendors used to use to warn against open source software - you don't know what you're getting, you have no guarantee it will work, etc.

Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#15

Post by tyingq »

catern wrote: post #10

Are these "fakes" mostly broken or nonfunctional chips? Or are they mostly chips produced by third party factories without the license for the chip IP? If it's the latter, I think that would be something to welcome - the official manufacturer can't make enough, so others will. Whether that's legal or not, it's good for the chip buyer. (And chips should be open source anyway, so I don't much care about them violating…

I recall that there's a mix of straight up fraud/non-functional and "at least something of a clone".

This article found ATMega328s chips that were actually buck voltage regulators: https://www.sparkfun.com/news/395

Here's an STM32 fake that "works", but has various issues (some serious) listed near the bottom: https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle/wiki/STM32-Fakes

Somewhat funny, the very bottom of the page above mentioned that "Note that this chip fixes Erratum 2.3 of genuine STM32F103". So the clone is arguably less buggy than the genuine STM32F103, at least in one aspect.

Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#16

Post by PedroBatista »

catern wrote: post #10

Are these "fakes" mostly broken or nonfunctional chips? Or are they mostly chips produced by third party factories without the license for the chip IP? If it's the latter, I think that would be something to welcome - the official manufacturer can't make enough, so others will. Whether that's legal or not, it's good for the chip buyer. (And chips should be open source anyway, so I don't much care about them violating…

The answer is: Yes.

It would be nice to have a chip that works or doesn't work at all. But there's a large amount that mostly works until it doesn't someday, somewhere and that can make millions of expensive electronics completely useless because some fake $0.02 chip died, plus the aftermath of who's at fault is another can of worms.

Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#17

Post by shakna »

catern wrote: post #14
deelowe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to be certain that those chips will comply with the specs and they will taint the supply chain. Traceability is extremely important in the hardware business.

That may be true - I'm not a hardware engineer. But it's interesting that that sounds exactly like the propaganda that proprietary software vendors used to use to warn against open source software - you don't know what you're getting, you have no guarantee it will work, etc.

It isn't like stories such as this one are rare. Unlike the FOSS v. Proprietary story where it's all anecdotal, we have actual events like this [0] one:

> These differences mean the fakes likely have higher power usage and lower sensitivities, even though they are functionally identical. The foundry could have marked these devices as Si24R1, which is compatible with the nRF24L01 and no one would have been wiser. But the lure of higher profits was obviously too tempting.

[0] https://hackaday.com/2015/02/23/nordic-nrf24l01-real-vs-fake...

Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#18

Post by pc86 »

laydn wrote: post #9

We were quoted $40 for a $4 STM32 microcontroller, by a component broker. Due to our desperate need, we caved in and paid for the 10x price and our only hope at this point is that the parts will be genuine. Sigh.

It sounds like it's actually a $40 microcontroller, then.

Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#19

Post by digikazi »

laydn wrote: post #9

We were quoted $40 for a $4 STM32 microcontroller, by a component broker. Due to our desperate need, we caved in and paid for the 10x price and our only hope at this point is that the parts will be genuine. Sigh.

Your experience sounds similar to ours. We're an engineering company in the UK; in better days we paid £3,000 for 1,000 chips. Today we paid £58,000 for the same amount.

Re: The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components

#20

Post by sandworm101 »

counterfeit /= fake.

A fake chip is a chip that isn't physically what it claims to be. It will not work properly. A counterfeit chip is one that was not made under appropriate licenses. It might be exactly the same as the legit chips. It might even come from the same factory line that makes the legit chips and have been tested right alongside legit chips. The only difference between a counterfeit and legit chip can be a line in a contract on a computer thousands of miles away from the physical object with absolutely no physical imperfections. If you are using a computer, or any other complex machine, chances are that at least some tiny corner of it wasn't made in 100% accordance with IP laws.

If an article wants to talk about "fake" chips then talk about fake chips. Don't go on about counterfeit chips and violations of intellectual property laws. Show me the chips that are not doing the jobs they are supposed to do.

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