Bogus!!

[JAC]

For those of you having "Close Encounters of the Fake Kind" ..........

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/3423

extract...

" Visually, it's usually hard to tell the bogus part from the real thing. In the fall of 2004, for instance, the military contractor L-3 Communications, based in New York City, reported numerous failures with an IC chip bearing the Philips Semiconductors logo. Failure analysis revealed a thicket of anomalies, including missing, broken, or separated wire bonds, and in some cases no silicon IC (die) inside the package. Other customers who bought the Philips chips also complained about their shoddy quality. The chips, it turns out, had all been purchased from an unauthorized reseller. They were indeed Philips ICs, but ones that Philips claimed had been scrapped as defective. Somehow, though, they had made their way onto the electronics gray market."[/b]

[jd]

.....interesting....