PowerVip Reports on Cloned Chips

“Clones for Microcontrollers & Chips,” is the subject of a PowerVip Management (Traverse City, MI) study of cloned chips for printer cartridges. The report alerts readers to recognizing cloned chips and helps uncover clone chip suppliers based upon PowerVip’s knowledge of the chip manufacturing industry.

The report reveals that two types of cloned chips are turning up in cartridges, including: Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chips and Microcontroller Unit (MCU) chips.

After noticing MCU chips are getting cheaper on the market from Asian competitors, PowerVip decided to test a number of lots. They discovered that certain MCU chips are not original and that chip maker’s operations had not become more efficient, nor where they paying less by purchasing larger quantities. PowerVip concluded that the chips were clones.

According to PowerVip, ASIC chips are suitable for manufacturing in large volumes such as for HP printers, but MCU chips are more appropriate for smaller production batches such as for, Samsung, Lexmark and Epson cartridges. In addition, the report mentions that chips marked with a “big black dot” seem to be ASIC chips but, could be MCU chips with a plastic cover.

PowerVip also stresses that industry players need to choose their chip suppliers carefully. They think that while everyone knows there are cloned cartridges out there, they should start to notice that there are cloned MCU chips as well.