When we introduce a new chip, we plan and execute a comprehensive reliability qualification plan. This plan will be based on many different reliability stresses addressing infant mortality rate test, early life failure rate test, long term life test failure rate prediction based on a small population of samples pulled from early production lots . Due to the fact of limited device sample sizes, we are trying to assign a confidence level to our failure rate predictions using "industry standard" chi-square adjustment in the hope, our prediction will be closer to real field failure rates. This is a "standard" approach of the semiconductor industry because testing very large sample sizes of chips is economically not feasible, especially for small-and fabless semiconductor companies. IBM Corp.'s …
[Read more...] about The Power of Population in Semiconductor Device Reliability
