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Quality Concerns For Kingston microSD Cards
Andrew "bunnie" Huang, whom we've discussed before for his book on Xbox hacking and development of the Chumby, has made an interesting blog post about problems he's found with Kingston microSD cards. He first encountered a batch of bad cards during production of the ChumbyOne, and found Kingston initially unhelpful when trying to get them replaced. After noticing some unusual markings on the chips, he decided to investigate for himself, comparing the ID data and dissolving the cards' casings with nitric acid to take a look inside. He found that each of his Kingston-branded samples actually had a Toshiba/SanDisk memory chip inside, and that the batch of low-quality cards he received may not be as uncommon as he thought.
"Significantly, Kingston is revealed as simply a vendor that re-marks other people's chips in its own packaging. Every Kingston card surprisingly had a SanDisk/Toshiba memory chip inside, and the only variance or 'value add' that could be found is in the selection of the controller chip. ... This tells me that Kingston must be crushed when it comes to margin, which may explain why irregular cards are finding their way into their supply chain. Kingston is also probably more willing to talk to smaller accounts like me because as a channel brand they can't compete against OEMs like Sandisk or Samsung for the biggest contracts from the likes of Nokia or RIMM. Effectively, Kingston is just a channel trader and is probably seen by SanDisk/Toshiba as a demand buffer for their production output. I also wouldn't be surprised if SanDisk/Toshiba was selling Kingston 'A-' grade parts, i.e., parts with slightly more defective sectors, but otherwise perfectly serviceable. As a result, Kingston plays a significant and important role in stabilizing microSD card prices and improving fab margins, but at some risk to their own brand image."
"Significantly, Kingston is revealed as simply a vendor that re-marks other people's chips in its own packaging"
And that is a surprise because? Of course that's what Kingston does - they don't own any fabs.
why is this news?
Your Kenmore dishwasher is really a Whirlpool and Kirkland jeans are Wranglers. This is news how? Are we supposed to be impressed by this guys over analysis of what everybody already knew went on?
It's becoming highly unreliable. Advances in error correction are plugging some of the holes, but you can expect to start to see real problems soon, especially with cheap brands where they don't up their controller quality (the controller has the ECC) to compensate for the low-grade NAND they buy.
As to Bunnie, I was pretty sure he'd been around the block already. Of course Kingston just repackages other people's NAND chips. There's only something like 7 manufacturers of NAND, and even that counts Intel and Micron separately even though they both sell the same designs every time. What did Bunnie think was in iPhones and XBox 360s? Apple and Microsoft don't make NAND either!
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
It is, arguably, additionally significant that the Kingston reps went from "Nope, we're not taking them back, you already programmed them, your problem..." to "Oh, goodness no, they definitely aren't fakes; but, um, yeah, we'll replace them for you..." when Bunnie presented his results.
Bunnie definitely knows his stuff hardware wise and(having been Chumby's man-on-the-ground for outsourced Chinese production for a while now) probably knows a thing or two about the dark corners of the supply chain; but his sample size is kind of small, and he could certainly be wrong in this case.
The fact that the vendor folded like a cheap card table when he presented his conclusion, though, makes me rather more inclined to trust it.
(Incidentally, isn't it kind of amazing that slapping a full 32-bit ARM core, with flash controller firmware, onto a flash chip is as cheap as simply testing the flash chip? Having been born early enough to see the tail end of the days when an 8086 box was a several-thousand-substantially-less-inflated-dollars device, that kind of blows my mind.)
All they ever were was a slick rebranding excercise, with a useful online tool to select the correct memory if you were a dumbass.
If you're going to buy rebranded memory at least do so from someone who puts quality first, eg Mushkin.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Yes, they use other companies' chips because they don't have a fab. Most companies don't have a fab. They buy from whomever is cheapest, manufacture it, and ship it. Sorry they had a bad batch and had poor customer service, but that's par for the course nowadays. Did you stop buying WD and Seagate drives because they had bad batches? They sure as hell did, as did every other manufacturer.
So I look at this post and see it as a hit piece. Why is slashdot even posting it?
I think you're complaining about the annoying U3 program that they use. You are completely WRONG about not being able to disable. In fact, SanDisk provides a tool to remove it completely. I had to do it to my USB thumb drive, as well as a few members of my family.
Just search for "Sandisk U3 removal" and you will find the tool you need.
The thing you are referring to is the "U3" system. It's a portable apps-ish thing.
It's easy to remove with their tool.
http://apac.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1415
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It seems like the major issue here isn't so much the chip switching(especially since all MicroSD cards should present exactly the same interface); but the wildly uneven quality. Bunnie didn't start his investigation for giggles, or because he had some moral objection to mixing chips; but because his product started failing validation at alarmingly high rates). If you are shipping memory cards that can't handle having a firmware image written to them, you've arguably crossed the line from an "agile" supply chain to a "downright slapstick" supply chain.
And the sad thing is, they get away with it. Reputation be damned. Sometimes it's more cost effective to purchase three of the same device even if you only use one at a time. Basically, you treat them like fuses. When one blows (malfunctions), you swap them out for another.
Time is money. In the fast paced world of IT, quality control often gets swept under the rug if your a small business. Sure, we all get pissed and swell a red face now and then, but we collectively seem to just except this nasty trend as a fact of life.
Life is not for the lazy.
His answer was that, if I didn't like it, I shouldn't have taken it out of its box in the first place and plenty of people like it so why don't I just shut the hell up?
Charmers.
Your mistake was calling their UK support line. You're lucky they didn't insult your parentage too.
Putting moderation advice in your