Corelis Introduces Semiconductor Validation Tool to Help Identify Counterfeit Components

As semiconductor components have become commonplace in daily life, so has the potential for counterfeit semiconductors to make their way into critical systems, posing significant risks to health, safety, and security of people worldwide. Semiconductor counterfeiting can be as simple as re-marking a genuine component to indicate it is new or offers better performance, or as complex as manufacturing exact clones that offer the same form, fit, and function as a genuine device—while discretely hiding additional malicious circuitry to gather data or disable a system without warning. The increased sophistication in counterfeit remarking techniques has reduced the effectiveness of visual inspection, making it critically important to include electronic verification in the detection process.

Ryan Jones, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer at Corelis claims, “The general semiconductor industry is in agreement that the best way to combat counterfeit components is to purchase from OCMs or their authorized distributors. While we stand by this recommendation, circumstances often require procurement from other component sources, opening the supply chain up to the risks of inauthentic parts. The JTAG Interrogator application makes it easy to electronically read and verify identifying information from compatible JTAG components, including the new Electronic Chip ID (ECID) standardized under IEEE-1149.1-2013.”

The JTAG Interrogator software includes a USB 2.0 JTAG hardware adapter to get started with semiconductor validation. List price for the JTAG Interrogator package is $550.