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The global chip shortage is creating a new problem: More fake components
- technothrasher 5y agoWe were just having this discussion at work last week, as we are a low volume manufacturer and are starting to see many of our ICs dry up at the major distributors. We're looking at smaller unknown distributors and Chinese companies on eBay and wondering how do we know we'll get what we order. There doesn't seem much area between the two choices of ordering with our fingers crossed or telling our customers we cannot deliver for 12+ months.
- choeger 5y agoShouldn't you be able to test an IC?
- varjag 5y agoFor many parameters it's not practically possible once the chips are binned and packaged at factory.
- sokoloff 5y agoMany of the fakes almost work. Some are ghost parts. Some are recycled. Some are parts that failed QC or were binned as a lower tolerance part and remarked as a higher tolerance part. Testing for all those possibilities is not economically feasible, especially if you’re outsourcing assembly. This is much more a “how do I know the 683rd chip on this reel will meet its sleep current specifications [so our device will make its battery life specs]?” rather than “how do I know this is an IC at all and not a fancy Lego brick?”
- stephen_g 5y agoYes, that's usually the issue. Often those "salvaged" parts seem to work well enough (with a good power supply, at room temperature) and then after a while all your shipped units start failing... That's if they're not just straight up a different (or non functional) part that's been re-marked and then you find yourself re-working hundreds or thousands of boards!
- technothrasher 5y agoSure, we can test a few when they come in, but we can't necessarily send them back or get our money back if buying from unknown sources in China. If we order samples, we're not necessarily guaranteed that there will be more available to purchase after we get the samples in, or that what we get in the next order will be good even if the samples were.
- postalrat 5y agoGet kinda had when you buy 10,000 and a dozen different types.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lnsru 5y agoFor my previous employer buying from shady sources never worked out. There were many different fakes from empty enclosures to almost working similar parts. Insanely expensive brokers worked well, but buying at 50x price isn’t feasible in the long run.
- 11thEarlOfMar 5y ago>This has led to global shortages that have now trickled down to most industries that depend on electronic components, ranging from basic home appliances like microwaves and refrigerators to the automotive sector. ...to the semiconductor equipment sector. We can't get components to make the controllers that control the machines that make semiconductors.
- laydn 5y agoWe 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.
- pc86 5y agoIt sounds like it's actually a $40 microcontroller, then.
- zsmi 5y agoWhich means, unfortunately, that you actually have a $100 coffee maker, and not a $30 coffee maker, then.
- kzrdude 5y agoDisregarding chip shortage, this sounds like a reasonable outcome after the pandemic anyway. Somewhere, all that money that was lost needs to be recuperated - partly in inflation.
- jtbayly 5y agoWhy does “lost money” need to be recuperated? That doesn’t sound necessary at all. What does sound reasonable is that supply and demand change the prices of things.
- kzrdude 5y agoSupply and demand example: governments have created a lot of money to pay for extraordinary expenses in 2020 and 2021. Supply of money is now greater and this leads to rising prices (i.e. inflation). What I mean by recuperation: We don't create more value just from creating money. So if there is more money to go around but the same amount of goods produced, that leads to inflation. We're talking about inflation to adjust for the money created to cover expenses.
- catern 5y agoAre 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 copyright...)
- karmicthreat 5y agoThose 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.
- makomk 5y agoIf 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.
- deelowe 5y agoThere 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.
- catern 5y agoThat 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.
- 5y ago
- sandworm101 5y agocounterfeit /= 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.
- tyingq 5y agoIt isn't always that simple. I had some counterfeit usb-to-serial chips that worked fine until the real manufacturer updated the windows driver and simultaneously made it hard to install old drivers. Risk is risk.
- neilv 5y agoThis one (it's the first break-the-counterfeits/knockoffs that comes to mind)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTDI#Driver_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTDI#Driver_controversy
- lbriner 5y agoThe part I don't understand is why didn't it fix itself relatively quickly once they realised the demand for ICs was there? Is it just because the demand is far greater than they ever had so the backlog is growing more quickly than they can produce? Others have talked about it mainly affecting high-end silicon rather than all components but I assume that most equipment now needs at least 1 high-end component as CPU or microcontroller?
- zsmi 5y agoThe fundamental reason is foundries work really hard to make sure they have zero idle time, by booking time months in advance, so there wasn't a lot of slack in the system to absorb the extra demand when it hit. Add some confounding factors like, it takes a long time to build a foundry, in general the CAD is specific to a foundry, not every foundry can make every part, and even if they could, they're not licensed to then: You get a global chip shortage that takes many months to unravel.
- tyingq 5y agoAs I understand it, there are lines with spare capacity, but the work to move manufactures takes time. Even for the same process/wafer size. So it's not just a capacity shortage per se. Rather, a situation where real demand was wildly different (higher, and lower) than predicted demand, and re-spreading work is hard.
- durnygbur 5y agoChip shortgage, but only on the retail market. Everyone from Lidl and IKEA, through Daimler, to Philips are putting chips in every most trivial device and component.
- dageshi 5y agoThey presumably had existing supply agreements in place. Some companies would've expected demand to increase due to everyone being at home during the pandemic and planned accordingly.
- BobbyJo 5y agoI honestly hope some good comes out of the shortage. Like, maybe some products that never needed any electronics get made without them again, or things that have entire computers built into them just go back to a few basic controllers. A good OLED TV that is just a panel and doesn't come with a slow horrible computer built in would be nice.
- mvanaltvorst 5y agoMy guess would be the exact opposite: current chip shortage has lead to billions of USD more put into new fabs and R&D. I think/hope the market will overreact to this shortage, and I'm excited to see what we will be able to do with all those new faster ultra-low cost microcontrollers in 5-10 years.
- MarkusWandel 5y agoCounterfeit chips can be a hazard even at the hobbyist level. I've had 2.5A rated DC/DC converters from Ali Express that, if overloaded, enter thermal runaway, and fake MAX232 devices that on any given powerup, have a single-digit percentage risk of the charge pump locking up and getting so hot that you can burn your fingers on them - thermal runaway again. Apparently a lot of the AVR328s on low-end Arduinos (which are still useful, despite much better microcontrollers existing now) are fake too, though I've never had a problem with one.
- ksec 5y agoFake or Counterfeit Chip has been a thing for a very long time. So chip shortage didn't create this problem. More people are discovering it because they are desperate for chips and they have to take a bet from unknown supplier. Normally you get like 10 box of solid chip with 1 box that are either counterfeit or fake. Now may be two or three. Some Manufacture are willing to bet because even if the chip cost 5x or 10x as much, it is still relatively small increase from their total BOM. Think Car as an extreme example, who cares if you pay $100 for chips that used to cost you $10 or even $5 when your car is worth $10K+? Not to mention your operation cost losses when you have no cars to sell.