Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

How on earth do you counterfeit a CPU of that grade without a trail a mile wide ?

I'm sure plenty of consumers would never notice if you swapped an i5 for an i7 but to counterfeit an entire CPU is next to unbelievable.

My guess is that if they follow these to the source they'll end up at an intel fab where they were discarded as rejects for some reason or other.

View on HN

From the reports I've seen, the CPU was entirely fake -- it was an inert chunk of molded metal.

Counterfeit to me suggests 'functional', just like counterfeit money is not 'real' but it functions just like real money until you test it thoroughly.

more here:

http://hardocp.com/news/2010/03/07/intel_comment_on_fake_cpu...

The "counterfeits" don't work at all; the "processor" is just a piece of metal and the "heatsink" is made of plastic.

That makes more sense, if they actually managed to counterfeit a CPU they ought to be given a medal or something ;)

It's a far cry from real counterfeiting, but in the past Intel had problems with "remarking" processors; people would buy low-bin parts, sand off the markings and re-etch them with a higher speed. This was fixed with multiplier locking and (to a lesser extent) CPUID.

I think the only way to do it, is to somehow package an old and cheap chip in the i7 package. It still won't be cheap but it is doable.

An old chip would at a minimum have to be socket compatible, otherwise the system won't even boot.

Simpler to just take a rejected chip and package it in a retail box.

Note that the chip itself seems genuine enough but all the bits around it (hologram, manual) are of such low quality that they might as well not be there.

Late stage rejects are supposed to be destroyed in the factory, given the number of those rejects and the fact that the street price of these chips is as high as it is there should be little cause for wonder that maybe someone figured out a way to make some money on the side?

Blank pages in a manual vs packaging an old chip in a 'new' case is a bit of a difference in grade of accomplishment.

edit: turns out the chips are not 'counterfeits' but simply clumps of metal

Reply on news.ycombinator.com