Local authorities on Friday suspended a workshop that made fake, or remarked, AMD microprocessors in Taipei, Taiwan, and seized unprecedented number of chips of nearly one million units.

A report over Sin Chew Daily web-site claims the local police had discovered a workshop that remarked microprocessors made by Advanced Micro Devices to sell them at higher price-points. It is unclear, which chips have been attempted to counterfeit and whether the chips were also somehow modified. Source for the processors the swindlers used is also unknown. At least one man is reported to have been arrested and accused of illegal handicraft.

The scales of the illegal manufacturing were relatively high: according to the report the police seized nearly one million of AMD chips, either relabeled or not, with value measuring in hundreds of millions of New Taiwan Dollars. According to the report, the chips were primarily designated to ship into Southeast Asia, however, were also supplied to China and even Germany. It is unknown, whether the fake chips are sold in retail, or installed into PCs.

Remarked CPUs may work unstably, malfunction and probably lack any overclocking potential, a capability that is valued by computer enthusiasts.

In early 2003 AMD found out there were AMD Athlon XP microprocessors relabeled into higher-speed more expensive SKUs on the market. The Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro Devices quickly informed its partners in the channel about the issue and then implemented certain measures to secure its chips from counterfeiting in future.

X-bit labs could not reach Advanced Micro Devices representatives on Sunday to find out the details. We intend to publish further details and clarifications in the coming days.