Integrated circuit (IC) components are part of nearly every major electronics application. Many emerging market segments require reliable operations for 10 to 15 years, even in severe environments. Most IC reliability assessments, however, only focus on meeting the demand of consumer applications that last an average of five years. Robust predictions of IC life in modern, high-reliability applications require a different approach.
With a foundation in reliability and semiconductor physics, the Ansys RES team uses simulation, testing, and teardown analysis to define IC failure risk in specific applications and identify reliability drivers. Whether you are trying to reduce component integration risk in a new application or solve IC reliability challenges in a severe environment, our experts have the experience and resources to help.
Traditional simulation and modeling techniques for ICs require extensive design, manufacturing, and test information that is not typically available to IC integrators and product designers. Our approach to IC reliability assessment helps designers mitigate reliability concerns early in the development process, using information about technology node and functional blocks to predict susceptibility to hot carrier injection, negative bias temperature instability, time-dependent dielectric breakdown, and other common IC failure mechanisms. This approach allows us to simulate the reliability of ICs in application-specific environments, without access to detailed IC design information.
Where testing is required to refine reliability estimates, Ansys designs and conducts environmental testing of ICs under load and can evaluate bit errors and other signs of wear through in situ monitoring and failure analysis, as appropriate.
