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Let's work through this example. You're a manufacturer of devices using FTDI chips. You make an emergency system for airplanes which e.g. releases breathing equ

by wegs 6y ago

Let's work through this example. You're a manufacturer of devices using FTDI chips. You make an emergency system for airplanes which e.g. releases breathing equipment, or life rafts, or similar. Or a backup avionics system. Due to a supply chain slip-up, a small number of counterfeit devices slipped in. An emergency comes up, and the instant the emergency system comes up, it turns out to have been bricked. People die. Is this a good outcome? If I were a manufacturer, I'd want to know about this ASAP. Would I want devices to stop working? Especially the examples you gave where people's lives are on the line? Absolutely not. I'd want them to work as well as possible until a replacement can go out. Pro-consumer would be a pop-up letting the user know they received a counterfeit devices. I can then contact whoever sold me the device, and ask for a replacement. During cross-shipping, I can keep working. Anti-consumer is having my business trip and fall on its face when all the pen tablets which allow people to work from home are bricked during a pandemic. Of course the counterfeit manufacturers are the bad guys. But FTDI is a company I'd never do business with either. If I'm an FTDI partner, and I got the wrong product, we were both cheated. I'm no more at fault than FTDI. Should FTDI smack me and my customers upside the head for it? Well, that means we're not really partners.

robomartin 6y ago
You are making the mistake of arguing against a hypothetical. It's just a fabricated example to convey an idea, not something to argue against. As an aerospace engineer I assure you that sourcing components for aerospace isn't as simple as your hypothetical to my hypothetical. > Pro-consumer would be a pop-up letting the user know they received a counterfeit devices. This from driver code? The party at fault here is whoever sourced the devices. If the design engineer called for FTDI and they put in FunTDI instead, well, they didn't build what they were contracted to build. Period. Something as simple as a driver revision to, for example, improve performance, could break a fake chip. Is the legitimate manufacturer supposed to now be aware of every fake and design their drivers forever more to ensure fakes work perfectly? C'mon, that's preposterous. If I design a board and someone decides to use a cloned version in their machine and somebody gets killed because of a software update I can assure you that the case wouldn't even get to court. The instant it is discovered that the board was a fake the entire thing would be thrown out. There is no way anyone is going to hold the manufacturer responsible for ensuring that clones work property. That is not what they are in business to do.
- leoedin 6y ago
  About 7 or 8 years ago I built an internal testing system used to test a satellite payload which used a microcontroller board from a reputable manufacturer, purchased through a reputable electronics supplier. When we updated the ftdi driver, the board was bricked. Fortunately the system was still in development so we found a different board - it was only a bit of pain. However, if that system had been shipped (as it was 6 months later), that board being bricked could have had much more significant ramifications. It would have caused a slipped schedule and tangible costs. What should I have done differently?
  - robomartin 6y ago
    You would have to explain the degree to which parts were traced, certified, tested, etc. If you simply trust the supplier and distributor anything could happen. I mentioned in another thread that we had one of the top two US electronics distributors knowingly ship us low "B" grade components many, many years ago. These components were in allocation and an enterprising young man at the distributor thought he would be smart and ship us a lower qualified component instead of what we ordered. That was twenty years ago or so. It cost our company dearly, nearly took us out of business. This was that learning moment for me and it changed my approach to sourcing as well as the level of trust I grant anyone providing us with components. I will never put anything into a design where an illegitimate or lower grade component could jeopardize the safety, reliability or operation of the system. At some level this is what engineering is about, isn't it? It's that old "Trust but verify?" concept. We are working on industrial, flight (aircraft) and space (lunar) projects at the moment. No component will go into any of these systems without full knowledge and verification of its origins. This is true for individual components or contracted sub-assemblies. BTW, this issue of failures being caused by not verifying components isn't anything new. The history of engineering is full of examples. One reasonably recent example of this happened to SpaceX a number of years ago: https://www.space.com/29994-spacex-rocket-explosion-cause-faulty-strut.html https://www.space.com/29994-spacex-rocket-explosion-cause-fa...
    - wegs 6y ago

by wegs 6y ago

robomartin 6y ago

You are making the mistake of arguing against a hypothetical. It's just a fabricated example to convey an idea, not something to argue against. As an aerospace engineer I assure you that sourcing components for aerospace isn't as simple as your hypothetical to my hypothetical. > Pro-consumer would be a pop-up letting the user know they received a counterfeit devices. This from driver code? The party at fault here is whoever sourced the devices. If the design engineer called for FTDI and they put in FunTDI instead, well, they didn't build what they were contracted to build. Period. Something as simple as a driver revision to, for example, improve performance, could break a fake chip. Is the legitimate manufacturer supposed to now be aware of every fake and design their drivers forever more to ensure fakes work perfectly? C'mon, that's preposterous. If I design a board and someone decides to use a cloned version in their machine and somebody gets killed because of a software update I can assure you that the case wouldn't even get to court. The instant it is discovered that the board was a fake the entire thing would be thrown out. There is no way anyone is going to hold the manufacturer responsible for ensuring that clones work property. That is not what they are in business to do.

leoedin 6y ago
About 7 or 8 years ago I built an internal testing system used to test a satellite payload which used a microcontroller board from a reputable manufacturer, purchased through a reputable electronics supplier. When we updated the ftdi driver, the board was bricked. Fortunately the system was still in development so we found a different board - it was only a bit of pain. However, if that system had been shipped (as it was 6 months later), that board being bricked could have had much more significant ramifications. It would have caused a slipped schedule and tangible costs. What should I have done differently?
- robomartin 6y ago
  You would have to explain the degree to which parts were traced, certified, tested, etc. If you simply trust the supplier and distributor anything could happen. I mentioned in another thread that we had one of the top two US electronics distributors knowingly ship us low "B" grade components many, many years ago. These components were in allocation and an enterprising young man at the distributor thought he would be smart and ship us a lower qualified component instead of what we ordered. That was twenty years ago or so. It cost our company dearly, nearly took us out of business. This was that learning moment for me and it changed my approach to sourcing as well as the level of trust I grant anyone providing us with components. I will never put anything into a design where an illegitimate or lower grade component could jeopardize the safety, reliability or operation of the system. At some level this is what engineering is about, isn't it? It's that old "Trust but verify?" concept. We are working on industrial, flight (aircraft) and space (lunar) projects at the moment. No component will go into any of these systems without full knowledge and verification of its origins. This is true for individual components or contracted sub-assemblies. BTW, this issue of failures being caused by not verifying components isn't anything new. The history of engineering is full of examples. One reasonably recent example of this happened to SpaceX a number of years ago: https://www.space.com/29994-spacex-rocket-explosion-cause-faulty-strut.html https://www.space.com/29994-spacex-rocket-explosion-cause-fa...
  - wegs 6y ago