Don’t Buy Tray Chips to Avoid Counterfeit Products – Says AMD
 

Advanced Micro Devices Talks on Counterfeit Products

Advanced Micro Devices confirmed X-bit labs a number of fake chips were recently seized in Taiwan and said end-users should get boxed microprocessors in order to avoid counterfeit microprocessors.

“AMD has rigorous standards for quality and reliability of its products. We recommend customers buy AMD processors only from authorized distributors and vendors through the Processor-in-a-Box (PIB) program. This will help ensure that they are purchasing the highest quality product and have access to the 3-year limited warranty AMD provides,” AMD’s spokesperson Damon Muzny told X-bit labs.

Still, Sunnyvale, California-based AMD declines to comment on the number of counterfeit processors that has been shipped to the market or has been seized recently.

“As a matter of practice, AMD does not comment on ongoing legal investigations,” AMD’s spokesperson said.

Late last week AMD raided an electronics company located in Tainan, southern Taiwan, and seized a total of 60 000 suspect AMD CPUs. According to other data, the police seized a million chips, fewer were chipped. The suspect AMD products include AMD Athlon XP and AMD Athlon 64 series chips and were reportedly defective CPUs that would normally have been destroyed.

Over a million re-marked AMD CPUs have allegedly been shipped to Germany and China, the Chinese-language Liberty Times reported Saturday, adding that the value of the seized CPUs would be about NT$300 million (about US$9.46 million), according to DigiTimes.

The microprocessors that were illegally sold might have been stolen from one of AMD’s three packaging and testing plants in Asia and shipped to Taiwan for re-marking. The possible source of the defective chips could be one of AMD’s packaging and testing plants in Singapore or Malaysia, or in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province (China).

Remarked and defective CPUs may work unstably, malfunction and probably lack any overclocking potential, a capability that is valued by computer enthusiasts.

In early 2003 AMD found out there were AMD Athlon XP microprocessors relabeled into higher-speed more expensive SKUs on the market. The Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices quickly informed its partners in the channel about the issue and then implemented certain measures to secure its chips from counterfeiting in future.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...106142242.html

or maybe this is a complot in order to persuade us to buy boxed (and more expensive) CPU's....

maybe....

I just can't get it how they loose 1 MILLION CPU'S ?

time to put in my resume at AMD :)