Conterfeit parts guidance

Hello all,

I am a Quality manager at Xilinx, and I have asked to provide specific guidance on the question of counterfieting. I would like to start by saying that the ONLY way to protect yourself is to purchase your devices from an authorized Xilinx distributor. A list can be found at this link.

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If you a buying outside of this channel you are taking on a fair amount of risk. Over the past 1.5 years Xilinx along with the Dept of Homeland Security have become aware of an escalatng issue out of SE Asia, where Xilinx component are being marked up for sale into grey market channels. We currently are looking into how to limit this activity.

The real simple rule is that if you go to they brokers or independent distributors you have absolutely no way of validating devices. Even if that entity provides what may appear to be legitimate documentation, the supply chain is broken and the care, custody, and control of the material is suspect. In many cases Xilinx will not be able to assist you in determining if those suspect devices are legitimate or usable.

We must sustain our valid authorized sale and distribution channels and in nearly all cases will not be able to assist or lend resources to unvalidated supply chains. That is not to say that we do not want to support our customer base, but this ever escalating pollution of the supply chain with grey market materials will ultimately strain available resources that would historically assist in these cases.

Please help eliminate this issue by only purchasing though authorized Xilinx sources, and you will avoid, completely, these types of issue.

Best regards

Reply to
craig.taylor
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Maybe you should give us some information on how to proceed if we are stuck with exeed devices with significant value, and want to sell them.

Reply to
Morten Leikvoll

eBay.

Reply to
Symon

Simple, burn the batch code (fabrication date) and speedgrade into the die and make them readable through JTAG.

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Reply to
Nico Coesel

The official distributors all have their own loops & hoops. So it's not always practical to buy from them.

What we want to know is how to evaluate the authenticity of the product not how to procure it.

Reply to
sky465nm

Speed is not known until final test, so that would require OTP fuse capability, but that may already be there, at least at the factory level ?. Now, a really clever counterfeit will clone this too, but it would catch slippage, easypath, and really dumb (wrong die) attempts.

Unique ID is another natural spin off, for expensive IP.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Please note, there is no way for an EasyPath device to be mistaken for an FPGA device. EasyPath devices are marked with a custom part number that is unlike any standard Xilinx FPGA part number.

Cheers, Patrick

Reply to
pdorsey

..and you think clean/re-labeling the package is a high-tech operation ? Quite routine in the far east....

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

It is true that it is fairly simple for the current markings to be easily removed and remarked. I have seen several examples of where this has happened. The issue is that we can really not provide tools that would allow legitimate users to validate the materials they purchased outside of our sales channels without providing that same information to the counterfieters. The new generations of Xilinx component are seeing the beginnings of factory level in chip security features.

There is no viable way to test components to determine authentcity in the field. There are some visual aspects in the marking but that too can be replicated. These are the reason why I suggest purchasing through a Xilinx authorized distributor.

I personally do not know how to answer the question on how to deal with excess inventory. It is more of the planning question. I know that there are situations where folks sell this material into an independent distributor, or other broker businesses. I am saying from the perspective of care custody and control, that Xilinx is unable to support materials purchased from this type of transaction. I am not saying that all independent distributors or brokers deal in counterfiet materials. If you have a source that has historically performed well for you, please consider staying with trusted sources.

Over the next year Xilinx is planning to make several security enhancments to our device marking that will make counterfieting much more difficult.

Reply to
Craig

k

Hi Morten,

I am an independent distributor, but not in the typical fashion. We inventory in the neighborhood of $100 million of components that have been purchased through reputable OEM's. We work very closely with our contracted accounts that we have SMI and VMI programs in place. I would like to take this offline and discuss a solution that will benefit you and also keep product in proper channels. I sincerely feel that I can help with your excess material and most long lead time components you may need.

I look forward to hearing from you and getting a better understanding of your situation. One Altera part I have an immediate order for is a EP2S130F1508C3N. I thank you in advance for taking the time to give me a quick call.

Best regards,

Jon E. Hansen Strategic Sales Pyramid Technologies Inc. snipped-for-privacy@pyramidemail.com

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Reply to
jon

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