5 ms·

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

by catern 5y ago

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 copyright...)

karmicthreat 5y ago
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.
- makomk 5y ago
  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.
deelowe 5y ago
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.
- catern 5y ago
  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.
  - shakna 5y ago
    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/ https://hackaday.com/2015/02/23/nordic-nrf24l01-real-vs-fake...
    - zsmi 5y ago
      Not only do we have events, they're not rare. Here is a more recent one from the same site. https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-ba...
  - tzs 5y ago
    The difference is that as far as I can recall there weren't people trying to pass off open source as someone else's proprietary software. You didn't think you were buying a copy of Oracle's DB or Microsoft Office and actually get a wrapper around MySQL or a restyled Open Office. You choose whether your wanted the propriety program or the open source program, fully aware that they were different programs with different abilities, features, limitations, and bugs. You could compare them and decide which suits your needs better and then reliably obtain that one. With hardware the fakes are being sold as the genuine part. You really don't know what you are getting and really don't know if it follows the spec. You might for example think you are buying a 3.3 V microcontroller that has 5 V tolerant input pins (meaning you can hook it straight up to a 5 V sensor you are using), but the fake is not 5 V tolerant and won't work for you unless you add a level shifter to your design. There was an article submitted to HN nearly a year ago [1] about fake/counterfeit DS18B20 temperature sensors. That article gives a good look at all the different kind of chips you might end up with when you think you are buying a DS18B20, with lots of details on how they differ from the real ones. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23815839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23815839
  - 5y ago
tyingq 5y ago
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 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 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.
PedroBatista 5y ago
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.

by catern 5y ago

karmicthreat 5y ago

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.

makomk 5y ago
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.

deelowe 5y ago

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.

catern 5y ago
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.
- shakna 5y ago
  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/ https://hackaday.com/2015/02/23/nordic-nrf24l01-real-vs-fake...
  - zsmi 5y ago
    Not only do we have events, they're not rare. Here is a more recent one from the same site. https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-ba...
- tzs 5y ago
  The difference is that as far as I can recall there weren't people trying to pass off open source as someone else's proprietary software. You didn't think you were buying a copy of Oracle's DB or Microsoft Office and actually get a wrapper around MySQL or a restyled Open Office. You choose whether your wanted the propriety program or the open source program, fully aware that they were different programs with different abilities, features, limitations, and bugs. You could compare them and decide which suits your needs better and then reliably obtain that one. With hardware the fakes are being sold as the genuine part. You really don't know what you are getting and really don't know if it follows the spec. You might for example think you are buying a 3.3 V microcontroller that has 5 V tolerant input pins (meaning you can hook it straight up to a 5 V sensor you are using), but the fake is not 5 V tolerant and won't work for you unless you add a level shifter to your design. There was an article submitted to HN nearly a year ago [1] about fake/counterfeit DS18B20 temperature sensors. That article gives a good look at all the different kind of chips you might end up with when you think you are buying a DS18B20, with lots of details on how they differ from the real ones. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23815839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23815839
- 5y ago

tyingq 5y ago

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 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 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.

PedroBatista 5y ago

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.