[deelowe]

OK, let's run with this a bit. Seems simple enough if you make a single pcba, but what if you're a company like sony and your product has 8 different pcbas in it, some source from other companies and some designed an manufactured in house. Whose testing process should screen the counterfeit chips? If a violation is found, who is liable? Someone has to be, because there will be a cost to the end user when the things go belly up. Also, why the hell would anyone have thought to do this in the past? I work in testing and no one creates a QC process to check for fakes during the PCBA process. You don't test the chips when you're manufacturing the board, you test the integration. Doing a full functional verification of every component during PCBA is really dumb.

No matter how you slice it, this is lunacy. FTDI was extremely short sighted here and any competent engineer or product manager will see this as a sign to be weary of incorporating FTDI into future designs. You don't want your component manufacturers playing shady stuff like this. Supply chain management is complicated enough without having to worry about devices getting bricked weeks, months, or years after you've done the engineering work.