4 ms·

I would be interested to know how the Pentagon deals with those 15% of counterfeit ICs, the implications are quite scary.

anfractuosity 9y ago
Yeah that does sound scary. I'm just looking at the pdf they link to in this article: https://www.semiconductors.org/clientuploads/Anti-Counterfeiting/SIA%20Anti-Counterfeiting%20Whitepaper.pdf https://www.semiconductors.org/clientuploads/Anti-Counterfei... In the summary they say, the following on how to 'win the battle' "The key to winning the battle against counterfeit semiconductors is elegantly simple: Exclusively buy semiconductor products either directly from the Original Component Manufacturer (OCM) or directly from the OCM’s Authorized Distributors/Resellers." I wonder if they have hardware to test the functioning of chips, like testing them to ensure they meet the parameters on the datasheets (like current consumption etc.).
- TFortunato 9y ago
  There absolutely is test hardware for the functioning of chips. After all, those datasheet numbers have to come from somewhere, right? ;-) Before I got into robotics, I worked in the semiconductor world as a test and product engineer for a couple of IC manufacturers. A lot of my job involved figuring out how to test every parameter we were going to put on the datasheet, writing code to test it quickly, and then doing statistical analysis of the results over thousands upon thousands of devices to make sure they met requirements. It was an interesting experience. We used some very high end test equipment, made by companies like Teradyne, and for each part (or family of parts in some cases), we would make a custom board which would mate to the test equipment on one side, and had sockets for the part we were testing, along with any support circuitry required. I think the problem with doing some sort of acceptance testing is that unless you buy the parts directly from the manufacturer or their distributors, it's very hard to verify that the part meets it's specs, unless you already have this kind of dedicated testing equipment and code, especially when you want to start measuring analog parameters (current consumption, logic levels, etc.), and don't think it would be worth the trouble in most cases. (Military / Space may be a special case, where critical parts may stop being manufactured by the original manufacturer and they do have to do this sort of thing, but as far as I know, it isn't typical).
  - anfractuosity 9y ago
    Cheers for your reply, that's very interesting! Also I'd never heard of Teradyne before, they seem to produce some very interesting hardware.
    - anoonmoose 9y ago
      Advantest and National Instruments both produce great equipment in this area as well.
- todd8 9y ago
  This is a bit off topic, but right out of grad-school, around forty years ago, I worked at Texas Instruments. The process control engineers would do their best, but to some degree (at least back then), the yield for integrated circuits coming off the fabrication lines was very tricky to control. So parts would be tested and sorted by their performance as they came out. The components that could operate at hight frequency would end up as the more expensive part numbers. One front end line would end up making a mix of two part numbers determined by the testing. Through some kind of magic, the process would be tweaked by the engineers over time and the yields for the more expensive parts would often increase to the point where they wouldn't even end up with enough of the low cost parts so they would just stamp the low cost numbers on the chips that could actually run under much more demanding conditions.
  - anfractuosity 9y ago
    Neat! Don't companies like Intel etc. still 'bin' chips into different products? Although I'm not sure if the reasons for binning now are different?
    - TFortunato 9y ago
      Yep, absolutely still done, and for the same reason (in my experience), especially with Intel, and other companies who develop their own processes. What typically happens is that engineers do the best they can before release to model the process and experiment with building devices at different process "corners". This gives an idea of what the distribution of different electrical parameters will look like over the range of expected process variation (logic levels of FETs, sheet resistances, etc. etc.). Obviously this data is imperfect, because there are a TON of steps in a modern semiconductor process, and a TON of variables in each one. (For example, I worked on Ion Implanters, and we recorded hundreds of variables for our customers during the run, from vacuum levels, to gas dosages to voltages and currents in the various accelerator stages). As parent said, there is another group, who IMO are probably the original "big data" folks, usually called manufacturing or process engineers. They monitor the yields, binning and specific electrical measurements of all the wafers and parts coming off the line, along with process data for all the nanufacturing steps the wafer has gone through. These guys do the black magic of figuring out what needs to be tweaked in the process. At the higher levels it involves a mix of knowledge -- not only statistics and optimization, but also the semiconductor physics of how these parts actually operate, (since experiments can get expensive, you want to justify the knobs you are going to tweak!)
anoonmoose 9y ago
They have a lot of requirements that get flowed down to their subcontractors, some of which include electrically testing the devices to make sure they meet data sheet requirements. Pretty fascinating industry. I can actually answer a fairly wide range of questions relating to this topic.
rbcgerard 9y ago
yeah - i think there was talk around some legislation on this a few years ago - I know fake aircraft parts (turbine fan blades etc) is another major concern
mhh__ 9y ago
I'm guessing there are companies that will test chips according to their data sheets for you?
- anoonmoose 9y ago
  Several. Although, since we're talking Pentagon, that's only true to the extent that they're willing to provide the data sheets...
  - moftz 9y ago
    The Pentagon isn't buying chips. The defense contractor working for the Pentagon is buying the chips and either testing in-house or subcontracting that out. Almost everything is going to be legit stuff. Fakes are only really going to show up in legacy design hardware that isn't being updated with stuff that's in stock at reputable vendors. So the only option is to find second-hand sources for that stuff because the contract wasn't to redesign the hardware, only to build it. Or it's coming from hardware that was bought in the US but manufactured in China by someone else and a manager over there decided to sub in some really cheap chips instead of the legit ones because they still work the same but might not be as rugged or maybe that guy was fooled too by a shady vendor. Maybe the vendor thought they were real too and was fooled by the chip manufacturer. You can always point the finger upstream. Good companies check up on their vendors and test their parts. Bad companies let themselves get fooled and suffer fines and bad reputation.
    - anoonmoose 9y ago
      I work as part of the chain you described there. I agree with nearly everything you said. The only points I would make would be the following: One, the government does occasionally purchase chips themselves. It's uncommon and they're difficult to work with but it happens. Two, work on legacy designs is very common, and not being able to source the components from reputable vendors is also very common.
pjc50 9y ago
Pentagon suppliers (Raytheon etc) would tend to be buying "milspec" devices of different construction (eg ceramic rather than expoxy packaging, direct from the US manufacturer. They're also the kind of organisation that does "whole life" buys, so they'll take the whole lot they'll ever need, sample some for QC purposes, and warehouse them until actually required for manufacturing.
- anoonmoose 9y ago
  A lot of the stuff they are buying is old, obsolete, and no longer sold by the manufacturer. So some of the time- like, way more than one might think- they're buying the parts from an open market that is a lot seedier than one would think would be part of such an important supply chain.
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deleted 9y ago
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anfractuosity 9y ago

Yeah that does sound scary. I'm just looking at the pdf they link to in this article: https://www.semiconductors.org/clientuploads/Anti-Counterfeiting/SIA%20Anti-Counterfeiting%20Whitepaper.pdf https://www.semiconductors.org/clientuploads/Anti-Counterfei... In the summary they say, the following on how to 'win the battle' "The key to winning the battle against counterfeit semiconductors is elegantly simple: Exclusively buy semiconductor products either directly from the Original Component Manufacturer (OCM) or directly from the OCM’s Authorized Distributors/Resellers." I wonder if they have hardware to test the functioning of chips, like testing them to ensure they meet the parameters on the datasheets (like current consumption etc.).

TFortunato 9y ago
There absolutely is test hardware for the functioning of chips. After all, those datasheet numbers have to come from somewhere, right? ;-) Before I got into robotics, I worked in the semiconductor world as a test and product engineer for a couple of IC manufacturers. A lot of my job involved figuring out how to test every parameter we were going to put on the datasheet, writing code to test it quickly, and then doing statistical analysis of the results over thousands upon thousands of devices to make sure they met requirements. It was an interesting experience. We used some very high end test equipment, made by companies like Teradyne, and for each part (or family of parts in some cases), we would make a custom board which would mate to the test equipment on one side, and had sockets for the part we were testing, along with any support circuitry required. I think the problem with doing some sort of acceptance testing is that unless you buy the parts directly from the manufacturer or their distributors, it's very hard to verify that the part meets it's specs, unless you already have this kind of dedicated testing equipment and code, especially when you want to start measuring analog parameters (current consumption, logic levels, etc.), and don't think it would be worth the trouble in most cases. (Military / Space may be a special case, where critical parts may stop being manufactured by the original manufacturer and they do have to do this sort of thing, but as far as I know, it isn't typical).
- anfractuosity 9y ago
  Cheers for your reply, that's very interesting! Also I'd never heard of Teradyne before, they seem to produce some very interesting hardware.
  - anoonmoose 9y ago
    Advantest and National Instruments both produce great equipment in this area as well.
todd8 9y ago
This is a bit off topic, but right out of grad-school, around forty years ago, I worked at Texas Instruments. The process control engineers would do their best, but to some degree (at least back then), the yield for integrated circuits coming off the fabrication lines was very tricky to control. So parts would be tested and sorted by their performance as they came out. The components that could operate at hight frequency would end up as the more expensive part numbers. One front end line would end up making a mix of two part numbers determined by the testing. Through some kind of magic, the process would be tweaked by the engineers over time and the yields for the more expensive parts would often increase to the point where they wouldn't even end up with enough of the low cost parts so they would just stamp the low cost numbers on the chips that could actually run under much more demanding conditions.
- anfractuosity 9y ago
  Neat! Don't companies like Intel etc. still 'bin' chips into different products? Although I'm not sure if the reasons for binning now are different?
  - TFortunato 9y ago
    Yep, absolutely still done, and for the same reason (in my experience), especially with Intel, and other companies who develop their own processes. What typically happens is that engineers do the best they can before release to model the process and experiment with building devices at different process "corners". This gives an idea of what the distribution of different electrical parameters will look like over the range of expected process variation (logic levels of FETs, sheet resistances, etc. etc.). Obviously this data is imperfect, because there are a TON of steps in a modern semiconductor process, and a TON of variables in each one. (For example, I worked on Ion Implanters, and we recorded hundreds of variables for our customers during the run, from vacuum levels, to gas dosages to voltages and currents in the various accelerator stages). As parent said, there is another group, who IMO are probably the original "big data" folks, usually called manufacturing or process engineers. They monitor the yields, binning and specific electrical measurements of all the wafers and parts coming off the line, along with process data for all the nanufacturing steps the wafer has gone through. These guys do the black magic of figuring out what needs to be tweaked in the process. At the higher levels it involves a mix of knowledge -- not only statistics and optimization, but also the semiconductor physics of how these parts actually operate, (since experiments can get expensive, you want to justify the knobs you are going to tweak!)

anoonmoose 9y ago

They have a lot of requirements that get flowed down to their subcontractors, some of which include electrically testing the devices to make sure they meet data sheet requirements. Pretty fascinating industry. I can actually answer a fairly wide range of questions relating to this topic.

rbcgerard 9y ago

yeah - i think there was talk around some legislation on this a few years ago - I know fake aircraft parts (turbine fan blades etc) is another major concern

mhh__ 9y ago

I'm guessing there are companies that will test chips according to their data sheets for you?

anoonmoose 9y ago
Several. Although, since we're talking Pentagon, that's only true to the extent that they're willing to provide the data sheets...
- moftz 9y ago
  The Pentagon isn't buying chips. The defense contractor working for the Pentagon is buying the chips and either testing in-house or subcontracting that out. Almost everything is going to be legit stuff. Fakes are only really going to show up in legacy design hardware that isn't being updated with stuff that's in stock at reputable vendors. So the only option is to find second-hand sources for that stuff because the contract wasn't to redesign the hardware, only to build it. Or it's coming from hardware that was bought in the US but manufactured in China by someone else and a manager over there decided to sub in some really cheap chips instead of the legit ones because they still work the same but might not be as rugged or maybe that guy was fooled too by a shady vendor. Maybe the vendor thought they were real too and was fooled by the chip manufacturer. You can always point the finger upstream. Good companies check up on their vendors and test their parts. Bad companies let themselves get fooled and suffer fines and bad reputation.
  - anoonmoose 9y ago
    I work as part of the chain you described there. I agree with nearly everything you said. The only points I would make would be the following: One, the government does occasionally purchase chips themselves. It's uncommon and they're difficult to work with but it happens. Two, work on legacy designs is very common, and not being able to source the components from reputable vendors is also very common.

pjc50 9y ago

Pentagon suppliers (Raytheon etc) would tend to be buying "milspec" devices of different construction (eg ceramic rather than expoxy packaging, direct from the US manufacturer. They're also the kind of organisation that does "whole life" buys, so they'll take the whole lot they'll ever need, sample some for QC purposes, and warehouse them until actually required for manufacturing.

anoonmoose 9y ago
A lot of the stuff they are buying is old, obsolete, and no longer sold by the manufacturer. So some of the time- like, way more than one might think- they're buying the parts from an open market that is a lot seedier than one would think would be part of such an important supply chain.
- deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago

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