Crap!Bought fake chips

Under the chip shortage market, have you ever encountered fake chips? According to a number of media reports recently, a number of semiconductor industry insiders revealed that under the global semiconductor shortage market, more fake chips have begun to circulate in the supply chain. Industry analysts believe that The global chip shortage creates a golden window for counterfeit chips to enter the market. This will bring quality risks to more electronic products and harm the interests of complete machine manufacturers and end consumers. Fake chips are rampant “Economic Observer” reported on June 22 that a chip agent said, “Counterfeit or refurbished components have been circulating in the electronic field, and their production and sales have even formed a fake assembly line, but the change is that (this kind of Fraud) The situation has become more serious this year, and the original sneaky fraud has also become a high profile. “This has been reflected in the transaction price. Originally, the price of second-hand chips was only 50% of the market price of new products. Now the price is rising, even at the same level as the market price of new products. The aforementioned agent also revealed that There are currently two forms of “fake chips” on the market: one is that companies recycle chips from electronic waste , Remove the evidence on the old chip, clean the packaging, and sell the “second-hand goods” to downstream at a lower price; The other is, Package the defective wafers on the regular manufacturing line , And then sell it to the downstream as shoddy. Compared with the real product, the performance, reliability, and shelf life of fake chips are usually insufficient. Coincidentally, relevant overseas researchers have also issued warnings about the prevalence of “fake chips”. According to a recent report by ZDnet, by regularly monitoring counterfeit report databases such as ERAI, the counterfeit electronics researcher Digita Das Cycle Engineering (CALCE) of the Advanced Life Center warned that the surge of counterfeit chips will appear in the next 6 months. Another industry insider, Steve Calabria, the founder of independent distributor PC Components, also said that the prelude to the influx of fake chips into the market has already begun. Calabria said, “The global shortage of semiconductor products has opened the door for criminals to use fake chips. I have seen some early signs, such as In an environment of tight global chip supply, not many companies show a large shortage of chip devices, and the market shows that the semiconductor supply chains of many companies are incredibly stable. ” Moreover, it is not uncommon for the semiconductor industry to trigger a wave of counterfeit products due to tight supply. According to industry insiders, fake chips also have a complete production and sales network, involving a variety of semiconductor products such as military connectors, microprocessors, FPGAs, and discrete devices. In the case of extreme abnormalities in the supply chain, the probability of prevalence of fake chips will be even higher. For example, the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, and Japan is one of the main manufacturers of electrolytic capacitors used in certain medical equipment. Studies have shown that with the extension of the delivery time of capacitors, equipment manufacturers are facing the pressure to quickly purchase semiconductor parts, skipping the strict review process of suppliers, resulting in fake capacitors entering the supply chain. “I can be sure that the fake chips entering the supply chain will happen again, and this time not only fake capacitors, but also more types of semiconductor devices,” Calabria said affirmatively. Increased types of fake chips Calabria is true. Actually, Since the chip supply was tight at the end of last year, a variety of counterfeit semiconductor products have been found in the market supply chain. MOS tube Chip House recently reported that some netizens reported that the company accidentally used fake MOS tubes, causing more than 7,000 devices to be recalled and reworked. Source: Chip House It is understood that compared to other components, MOS tubes are more prone to fraud. Unlike common chips, general-purpose MOS has little difference in appearance in the same package, but MOS of the same model of different brands is still different. For the same specifications and models, some standard test environments have DS internal resistance of several hundred milliohms. Of Guizhou. And the above-mentioned netizen got it not the model he needed to purchase, but the model with similar parameters and higher compatibility marked with a genuine silk-screen “set” and sold it as a genuine product. This kind of fake product may not be able to detect the abnormality in the third-party functional test. The problem will not be discovered until the fakes are in the hands of the end customer and the machine is officially put on the machine. The loss at this time is not just a matter of payment for counterfeit products. sensor According to the announcement on the official website of the General Administration of Customs of China in early January 2021, on December 26, 2020, an electronic technology company in Wuxi declared to the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Customs Office under Gongbei Customs for exporting a batch of goods such as integrated circuits. When the on-site customs officer opened the box and inspected it, it was found that the batch of integrated circuits had the “ANALOG DEVICES” logo, a total of 17,500 pieces, valued at RMB 7,461,200, and the owner could not provide a legal authorization certificate. Source: Official website of the General Administration of Customs of China It is reported that ANALOG DEVICES is an American sensor manufacturer. After verification, the goods were suspected of infringing the exclusive right to use the trademark “ANALOG DEVICES” registered with the General Administration of Customs. MCU According to industry insiders, the cost of MCU fraud is relatively high, but under the high market, MCU also has the phenomenon of fake chips. 21IC.com forum netizen imdx posted at the end of 2020 that the “new and original” GD32F103C8T6 bought by a treasure, the pins look neat, the silk screen is also very clear, and the mark points are somewhat different from the previous ones. The actual test and debugging tool identified that it is indeed GD32F103C8T6, which can also burn the program and run normally. Image source: 21iC However, some chips (approximately 10%-40%) are powered on with a 3.3V power supply with low resistance to ground, resulting in a large standby current, ranging from 10mA to 300mA. imdx said that for a normal chip, the 3.3V input current is very small, less than 2mA, before the program is flashed. Such a large current must be disassembled and polished. Checking the UID of the chip, the UID of the same batch is very confusing, and the UID of the same batch of chips previously taken from other suppliers is very similar. It can be seen from the above “fake chip” cases that the current semiconductor industry fraud not only designs a wide variety of semiconductors, but also covers a wider range of brands. There are both domestic semiconductor manufacturers and international semiconductor giants, which involve the domestic market as well as overseas. market. In addition, industry insiders have analyzed that fake chips are easier to circulate in consumer electronic devices. Unlike automobiles and industries, some consumer electronics manufacturers do not perform long-term verification and testing on chips and their suppliers. It is also easy to circulate fake chips in some products with lower profits and lower requirements on chip performance and technology, or in products with faster replacement. Behind the rampant fake chips There are more and more types of fake chips, and the more they are sold, the more expensive they are. Behind this rampant is the chastisement of fake chip transactions and the tight chip supply chain. Some agents said, In bulk purchases of fake chips, it is not common for buyers to sue for accountability, and there is a lot of resistance behind them. For example, the appraisal of wafers “as shoddy” is very vague and requires professional institutions to judge. At the same time, chip channel companies are relatively scattered, and some seller companies usually do not have a formal organization or even a shell company, and it is not good for the buyer to continue to report. The source also revealed that there is another situation that some buyers have acquiesced to illegal chips due to shortages and cost reductions. Because even if it is carefully packaged, the performance indicators of the chip are still measurable, and the purchaser has the ability to identify it. For example, in the above identification of fake MCU products, it was tested and verified by engineers during the development process. The buyer’s acquiescence under certain circumstances is also the reason for the formation of the counterfeit industry chain. Especially in the current environment of tight global chip supply, enterprise production lines are facing the dilemma of shutdown due to lack of core, providing a golden window for fake chips to intervene in the supply chain. Das mentioned above stated that, except for large companies that directly deal with the original factory, most companies understand that they need to be cautious when considering safe transactions and purchasing products from other suppliers. For example, check the records of the company that sells the components and thoroughly test the parts after they are received. But this means that it will take a week or even more time to conduct due diligence-under the current circumstances, some companies cannot afford these time costs. “If the impression given to the company is that there is a shortage of chips, you must buy it today, otherwise you will not be able to obtain the chips, and you will not abide by the rules of verifying supplier qualifications and product testing procedures,” but Das reminded: “This will increase the company’s acquisition of fake Probability of the chip.” Many voices in the industry are reminding and warning about the phenomenon and fashion trends of fake chips. Actually, Regarding how to solve the problem of fake chips, companies have not many options apart from taking time to do due diligence in selecting suppliers and identifying products. Product identification may be as simple as using a microscope to check whether the appearance of the purchased product is consistent with the original product; X-ray checking whether the internal dimensions of the semiconductor product are correct; or using special techniques to determine whether the chip surface is scratched and re-marked, or it may be Harder. But this kind of investigation and testing can minimize the purchase of fake chips. For the buyer, fake chips cannot really solve the problem of core shortage, and ultimately hurt its downstream customers and end consumers. For the seller, it also bears the risk of financial claims and damaging its reputation in the industry. In the supply chain of fake chips, there is no real winner. ―End―