2011-12-04

Counterfeit Elpida DRAMs actually Samsung chips Electronics News

DICK James wrote on the Chipworks blog about his investigation into counterfeit Elpida DRAM products, and found counterfeiters were rebadging low-grade Samsung components.

Elpida has an announcement on its site concerning counterfeit products, warning that some DRAMs marked as Elpida were fakes and had performance and quality problems.

James said that as a customer, he was affected, since what he thought were genuine 2Gb Elpida 25-nm DDR3 SDRAMs were in fact counterfeits.

The package was marked with genuine-looking parts numbers, but further investigation found a Samsung 2Gb die, along with the associated die mark. Additionally, the Samsung component used the 48nm process, not the 25nm process that the Elpida product allegedly has.

James said the counterfeiters removed the markings on low-grade Samsung parts, then re-marked them with high-end Elpida numbers. However, given the current prices for memory, little profit can be made from such actions.

For more information and a more detailed dissection, visit the Chipworks blog.


Counterfeit Elpida DRAMs actually Samsung chips Electronics News

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