4 ms·

If anyone is curious what a real vs fake FTDI chip looks like under the hood (de-capped chip) this is a great analysis and some beautiful pictures. http://zept

If anyone is curious what a real vs fake FTDI chip looks like under the hood (de-capped chip) this is a great analysis and some beautiful pictures. http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supereal http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supere... Exerpt: "What's the economic reason of making software fake of well-known chip instead of making new one under your own name? This way they don't need to buy USB VID, sign drivers in Microsoft, no expenses on advertisement. This fake chip will be used right away in numerous mass-manufactured products. New chip will require designing new products (or revisions) - so sales ramp up will happen only 2-3 years later. Die manufacturing cost is roughly the same for both dies (~10-15 cents)."

danesparza 12y ago
+1 for the fake chip name. "Supereal" takes the cake
- cesarb 12y ago
  "Supereal" might not be the name of the fake itself, it might be just the name of the mask-programmable microcontroller they used. "It seems that in this case Chinese designers implemented protocol-compatible "fake" chip, using mask-programmable microcontroller. This way they only needed to redo 1 mask - this is much cheaper than full mask set, and explains a lot of redundant pads on the die."
tmp26 12y ago
What is the HN crowd's preferred way of dealing with that kind of parasite?
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  If someone makes a compatible chip from scratch then they are not a parasite, they are a competitor.
  - sigterm 12y ago
    Not if they label the "compatible chip" as the genuine ones.
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      Then any parasitism is restricted to trademarks rather than trade secrets, patents, etc. Who cares about trademarks?
      - jessaustin 12y ago
        After giving this some more thought, it's no longer clear to me that a simple {vendor, product} id pair is even "protected" by trademark. It would be protected by contract terms, especially if at some point in the supply chain someone had signed a contract with USB-IF. However it's quite clear that no entity is entitled to commit vandalism in order to enforce contract terms for a contract to which that entity is not even a party.
    - userbinator 12y ago
      But how is the driver to know what's written on the chip?
      - sigterm 12y ago
        You mean how the driver tells the counterfeit apart? I don't really know. One possibility is that the counterfeit didn't copy some of the "don't care" cases exactly.
        nknighthb 12y ago
        You completely missed the point. The driver cannot possibly know the difference between a chip falsely sold as being an FTDI chip, and one that is compatible without being mislabeled.
        12y ago
userbinator 12y ago
I've seen that one before but what caught my attention this time was the "(M)FTDI FEB 2005" line - the design is approaching 10 years old, and the significance of that is the fact that IC layouts ("mask work") are only protected for 10 years by copyright law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Chip_Protection_Act_of_1984 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Chip_Protection_A... It's also completely legal to reverse-engineer an existing IC to duplicate its functionality in a different manner, which the cloners have definitely done in this case - they are completely different. So it appears that the only thing the fake FTDI chip is violating is the trademark "FTDI", which might not even have been put there by the fab that produced the die, since they're branded 'Supereal'.

danesparza 12y ago

+1 for the fake chip name. "Supereal" takes the cake

cesarb 12y ago
"Supereal" might not be the name of the fake itself, it might be just the name of the mask-programmable microcontroller they used. "It seems that in this case Chinese designers implemented protocol-compatible "fake" chip, using mask-programmable microcontroller. This way they only needed to redo 1 mask - this is much cheaper than full mask set, and explains a lot of redundant pads on the die."

tmp26 12y ago

What is the HN crowd's preferred way of dealing with that kind of parasite?

Dylan16807 12y ago
If someone makes a compatible chip from scratch then they are not a parasite, they are a competitor.
- sigterm 12y ago
  Not if they label the "compatible chip" as the genuine ones.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Then any parasitism is restricted to trademarks rather than trade secrets, patents, etc. Who cares about trademarks?
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      After giving this some more thought, it's no longer clear to me that a simple {vendor, product} id pair is even "protected" by trademark. It would be protected by contract terms, especially if at some point in the supply chain someone had signed a contract with USB-IF. However it's quite clear that no entity is entitled to commit vandalism in order to enforce contract terms for a contract to which that entity is not even a party.
  - userbinator 12y ago
    But how is the driver to know what's written on the chip?
    - sigterm 12y ago
      You mean how the driver tells the counterfeit apart? I don't really know. One possibility is that the counterfeit didn't copy some of the "don't care" cases exactly.
      - nknighthb 12y ago
        You completely missed the point. The driver cannot possibly know the difference between a chip falsely sold as being an FTDI chip, and one that is compatible without being mislabeled.
        12y ago

userbinator 12y ago

I've seen that one before but what caught my attention this time was the "(M)FTDI FEB 2005" line - the design is approaching 10 years old, and the significance of that is the fact that IC layouts ("mask work") are only protected for 10 years by copyright law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Chip_Protection_Act_of_1984 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_Chip_Protection_A... It's also completely legal to reverse-engineer an existing IC to duplicate its functionality in a different manner, which the cloners have definitely done in this case - they are completely different. So it appears that the only thing the fake FTDI chip is violating is the trademark "FTDI", which might not even have been put there by the fab that produced the die, since they're branded 'Supereal'.