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."

Comments

Yawn

[duncanFrance]

"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.

Re:Yawn

[drachenstern]

Wait, you mean that "ValueRAM" doesn't give the concept of their brands away? I use Kingston stuff because it's bulk and cheap, not because it's performance. Anyone else who does otherwise is amazing me with their concepts of brand recognition.

Re:Yawn

[Sique]

They never have been. That's why they are called "brands" and not "manufacturers".

Re:Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Everytime I go to a deal site, I see Kingston RAM or flash on sale. I usually avoid them because I know they dont make their own stuff, but sometimes I'll pick some up for an application that doesnt need the best parts like disposable USB drives or RAM for a htpc.

You're under the impression that the other RAM or flash drives you buy are not rebranded? There are very few companies in the world that make DRAM in quantity: samsung, hynix, toshiba, and elpida. Similarly for NAND flash, it is only made by samsung, hynix, toshiba-sandisk, and intel-micron. Unless you're buying one of these directly, you are purchasing rebranded products.

Re:Yawn

[lobsterturd]

Why is this modded 5 insightful? I can't believe how Slashdotters' comprehension skills seem to be lacking.

The point of the FA is not that Kingston doesn't make their own parts (that applies to every vendor), but that their authorized distributor delivered an irregular batch of cards that seemingly couldn't even handle being programmed with a ~50 MB firmware. These irregular cards just so happened to use the same controller chip as an obvious fake, which raised the question of how a seemingly reputable brand managed to unexpectedly supply such low-quality parts.

NAND is getting worse and worse

[YesIAmAScript]

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!

Re:All that from a few open chips, eh?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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.)

Re:Sandisk suck

[compro01]

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