A real life experience of a company finding counterfeit electronic components in its products is given in a recent blog post. The post is by Joe Garrison, co-founder of Saleae , maker of “the world’s greatest [tiny] logic analyser, Logic.”
Joe suspected something was wrong when a high number of boards destined for one of Saleae’s products failed the function test after they had been assembled. He noticed the USB communications IC which had been procured from Asia were running unusually hot both in the good and the failed boards.
Initially, he discounted the idea that it was a counterfeit issue because he thought who would bother to counterfeit/reverse engineer an ASIC. After further investigation Saleae was able to verify that the USB chip was a reclaimed instance of an ancient version of the part! The parts had been relabeled with a modern part number.
Fair play to Joe, there is many a company who would not have made this public at all. But thanks to Joe we are all a little better educated.
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