Chaos abounds! Are the chips still fake? Learn these few tricks and no longer be afraid of being scammed...

Under the market shortage of chips, have you encountered fake chips? According to a number of media reports, a number of semiconductor industry sources revealed that under the global shortage of semiconductors, more fake chips began to circulate in the supply chain. Industry analysts believe that the global chip shortage has created a golden window for fake chips to enter the market, which will bring quality risks to more electronic products and harm the interests of machine manufacturers and end consumers.

The fundamental reason for the entry of fake chips into the market is the imbalance between supply and demand

The continuation of the epidemic has brought about tremendous changes in people's work and lifestyle. Working from home and taking vacations from home have become a habitual routine for most people. Remote meetings and online entertainment require a lot of electronic equipment, which increases the demand for consumer electronics, and accordingly the demand for chips continues to rise.

However, under the influence of the epidemic, the factories that produce chips have insufficient production capacity, and the overall supply capacity of the chip industry is not even as good as before the epidemic, which is in sharp contrast with the surging market demand. Demand rises and production capacity declines, eventually resulting in a severe shortage of chips and an imbalance between supply and demand.

These effects are already being felt in the world's largest companies, most notably in the consumer electronics industry. Samsung co-CEO and head of mobile business Koh Dong-jin said at a shareholder meeting in March this year that the supply and demand of chips in the IT sector had become seriously out of balance. At the time, Samsung said it might cancel the normal launch of the next-generation Galaxy Note smartphone. According to the "Financial Times" report, LG also said it "is closely monitoring the situation; if the problem persists for a long time, then no manufacturer can stay out of it." We asked LG for confirmation on this matter, but did not receive an immediate response.

At the same time, production of low-end processors, such as those used to weigh laundry in washing machines or control the temperature of bread in smart toasters, has also been hit hard. At present, although most retailers still have relatively sufficient inventory, the epidemic continues to consume inventory, and market demand does not drop but increases. Relying on inventory is not a long-term solution.

Counterfeit chips are harder to detect than counterfeit electronic products

The production of electronic products needs to take into account both software and hardware. In short, the integration of operating systems and hardware is a science. After consumers obtain an electronic product, the appearance and use experience can get feedback at the first time. Even if a separate hardware or operating system can be faked, the integration of the two still has a considerable threshold, and the integration is not good enough will directly affect consumers. Use experience.?

By contrast, it is much easier to produce counterfeit chips. First, the challenges of producing counterfeit chips are not as daunting as finished products, and counterfeit chips are not directly confronting consumers. In the case of an industry-wide chip emergency, having no chips means shutting down the production line, which makes it less likely for downstream manufacturers to rigorously test the chips they receive. Ultimately, counterfeit chips can enter the market more easily.

The above situation has actually been reported. At a time when graphics cards were in short supply, manufacturer MSI brought back the 2014 Nvidia GT 730. Readers with some knowledge of the hardware, however, will know that the GT 730 is an outdated product—it offers about half the performance of Intel's UHD integrated graphics, and not even one-fifth the performance of 2015's GTX 950. But for manufacturers, the GT 730 works, in other words, a chip is better than nothing.

How to identify fake chips?

So how can we effectively identify fake chips? There are several ways:

1. See if there are any scratches on the surface of the chip

The surface of the polished chip will have fine lines and even the micro-marks of the previous printing, and some are coated with a thin layer of paint on the surface of the chip to cover it up, which looks a little shiny and has no plastic texture.

2. Look at the print

The vast majority of chips today are marked by laser or printed with a dedicated chip printer. The handwriting is clear, neither conspicuous nor blurred and difficult to erase. Refurbished chips have either the edge of the writing corroded by the cleaning agent and have a "jaggy" feeling, or the printing is blurred, different in shades, misplaced, easy to erase or too conspicuous?

3. Look at the pins

All tin-plated pins that are as bright as "new" must be refurbished. Most of the pins of genuine ICs should be so-called "silver powder pins", which are dark in color but uniform in color, and there should be no oxidation marks or "flux" on the surface. "In addition, the pins of DIP and other plug-ins should not have scratches, even if there are scratches (repackaged only), the scratches should be neat, in the same direction, and the exposed metal parts should be clean and free of oxidation.?

4. Look at the production date of the device and the label of the packaging factory

The label of the genuine product, including the label on the bottom of the chip, should be consistent and the production time should be consistent with the device, while the label of the refurbished product is confusing and the production time is different.

5. Measure the thickness of the device and see the edge of the device

Many original laser-printed grinding and refurbished sheets (most of which are power devices) must be ground deeper to remove the original marks, so the overall thickness of the device will be significantly smaller than the normal size, but do not compare or measure with calipers, generally inexperienced people still It's hard to tell, but a workaround is to look at the front edge of the device. Because the plastic-encapsulated device needs to be "released" after injection molding, the edge corner of the device is round (R angle), but the size is not large. It is easy to grind the rounded corner to a right angle during grinding, so once the front edge of the device is a right angle , can be judged as polished goods.

6. Verify the supplier

Generally speaking, as long as you are looking for a regular agent, the possibility of fake goods is very small, but many times we also encounter those fake agents. The best way is to check or call the relevant official website first. Call directly to confirm to see if the company has legal agency rights, or you can visit the door to check the goods, compare the outer box, labels, packaging, etc., to ensure the original packaging. It is recommended that you try to buy components from formal channels to reduce the risk of buying fakes.

Summary: The current large-scale supply chain is in an unbalanced state, and various components are in short supply. China has almost the largest electronic component trading center in the world. There are large and small businesses here, and tens of thousands of electronic waste are processed every day. Dismantling, these provide market opportunities for fake chips, most of which are circulated domestically, and some are also circulated to overseas supply chains.

For the buyer, fake chips cannot truly solve its core shortage problem, and ultimately hurt its downstream customers and end consumers. For the seller, it also bears the risk of financial claims and damage to its reputation in the industry. In the supply chain of fake chips, there is no real winner.