Reliability is a key success factor to Engineering products today, and the requirement for integrated circuit reliability is increasing due to increasing complexity of electronic products, market globalization and manufacturing outsourcing. This chapter illustrates the important of integrated circuit reliability and the rationale behind its “ridicules” requirement of more than 50 years. Reliability test is not new to the integrated circuit manufacturers. However, there are several seemingly intuitive concepts in the reliability tests and test data analyses that are being practice in the manufacturers today are incorrect and can lead to over-estimation of product reliability grossly. This chapter shows the different misconceptions in the common reliability practices of integrated circuits manufacturers with examples. The purpose of this chapter is to bring awareness of these misconceptions. All these misconceptions can be resolved with the proper use of reliability statistics which is beyond the scope of this chapter.
Cher Ming Tan. “Reliability Assessment of Integrated Circuits and its Misconception,” in Integrated Circuits, Photodiodes and Organic Field Effect Transistors. New York, United States: Nova Scientific Publishing, 2009, pp. 45-68.