3 ms·

I had some mosfet gate drivers (IR2112) that were really marked as IR2113, a higher tier part. The only real way to tell what you've got is to remove most of th

by Hasz 3y ago

I had some mosfet gate drivers (IR2112) that were really marked as IR2113, a higher tier part. The only real way to tell what you've got is to remove most of the epoxy, then boil the rest in nitric/sulfuric acid. After much mess and fume, you'll be left with the raw die and can inspect the markings. I've done this a couple of times, it's quite cool. In my experience, most "fakes" are crappier parts marked up to be better, or chips that have failed QA. Rarely do you get a whole clone, although for some very high volume or simple, old parts, it's a bit more common. If you like this, check out [zeptobars](https://zeptobars.com/en/ https://zeptobars.com/en/), they post high quality dieshots, and sometimes fakes. IR2113/IR2112 die: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6DfBuPwAAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6DfBuPwAAA

rcxdude 3y ago
I've heard a story of the opposite, mislabeled from the manufacturer themselves! They were pressing the buyer to upgrade to a newer, faster MOSFET, but the buyer wasn't interested in dealing with going through the EMC compliance process again, so wanted the older parts. Eventually the seller appeared to relent, and shipped a box of FETs with the older label, but lo and behold the assembled boards failed EMC testing, and it turned out the manufacturer had just labelled their newer parts with the old part number and hoped no-one would notice.
A1kmm 3y ago
> although for some very high volume or simple, old parts, it's a bit more common And often the prevalence of the high volume parts actually makes it nearly impossible to find things using the originals. For example, I once wanted a real FT232 breakout board (or at least a clone that can do most of what the original can do) to use some of the bit-banging features of the chip. But the most popular clones of that chip are very much reduced functionality variants that work as a USB-to-UART but don't do most of the other functionality. This was probably not helped by the fact that the original chips, and early more faithful replicas had onboard flash and allowed a degree of programming, but then the manufacturer of the original chip embedded malware in their Windows driver that detected and wrote bad data to the clones flash (which would have broken many products sold to consumers with them - technically fixable by removing the driver and re-flashing, but probably in most cases just becoming e-waste). So the clone manufacturers responded by simplifying: removing the flash, and removing most of the programmable functionality, and focusing on the UART part that was the most common use case. Now, no matter how hard you try pre-purchase to make sure something is a full FT232 implementation (including asking for assurance about the chip up front) on a marketplace like Aliexpress or eBay, you are far more likely than not to got a limited functionality clone.
datpiff 3y ago
Do you know if both those parts have different die? Many product ranges are determined by binning - so all the die look the same, but the ones that test with worse performance are designated a lower tier part number.
- datpiff 3y ago
  edit: I read your blog post on this - I think you are right. The rated currents are too different to share a single design

by Hasz 3y ago

rcxdude 3y ago

I've heard a story of the opposite, mislabeled from the manufacturer themselves! They were pressing the buyer to upgrade to a newer, faster MOSFET, but the buyer wasn't interested in dealing with going through the EMC compliance process again, so wanted the older parts. Eventually the seller appeared to relent, and shipped a box of FETs with the older label, but lo and behold the assembled boards failed EMC testing, and it turned out the manufacturer had just labelled their newer parts with the old part number and hoped no-one would notice.

A1kmm 3y ago

> although for some very high volume or simple, old parts, it's a bit more common And often the prevalence of the high volume parts actually makes it nearly impossible to find things using the originals. For example, I once wanted a real FT232 breakout board (or at least a clone that can do most of what the original can do) to use some of the bit-banging features of the chip. But the most popular clones of that chip are very much reduced functionality variants that work as a USB-to-UART but don't do most of the other functionality. This was probably not helped by the fact that the original chips, and early more faithful replicas had onboard flash and allowed a degree of programming, but then the manufacturer of the original chip embedded malware in their Windows driver that detected and wrote bad data to the clones flash (which would have broken many products sold to consumers with them - technically fixable by removing the driver and re-flashing, but probably in most cases just becoming e-waste). So the clone manufacturers responded by simplifying: removing the flash, and removing most of the programmable functionality, and focusing on the UART part that was the most common use case. Now, no matter how hard you try pre-purchase to make sure something is a full FT232 implementation (including asking for assurance about the chip up front) on a marketplace like Aliexpress or eBay, you are far more likely than not to got a limited functionality clone.

datpiff 3y ago

Do you know if both those parts have different die? Many product ranges are determined by binning - so all the die look the same, but the ones that test with worse performance are designated a lower tier part number.

datpiff 3y ago
edit: I read your blog post on this - I think you are right. The rated currents are too different to share a single design