Author's Latest Posts


Reliability On The Rise In IC Design


Reliability has been an important factor in the semiconductor industry for decades. A closer look reveals three main priorities: In the area of technology development and optimization, the microscopic mechanisms that lead to degradation must be identified and understood before they can be fixed. Microanalytical methods are used here as well as TCAD simulations. If it’s not possible to... » read more

The Reliability Of Analog Integrated Circuits And Their Simulation-Aided Verification


Different challenges have to be overcome when designing integrated circuits. Besides schematic and layout design work, verification in view of the non-ideal behavior of circuits and semiconductor technologies in particular is also relevant. The designed circuits have to work at specific operating voltages and within ambient temperature ranges and be robust in terms of process fluctuations ... » read more

The Importance Of Aging Simulation In IC Design


Electronics reliability has been an important quality criterion in the automotive sector and in industrial automation for years. Electronics in this sector have to achieve product lifetimes of 10+ years under partially harsh environmental conditions. But the reliability of electronics is also becoming more important in other fields. For example, end customers now keep consumer products longer, ... » read more

What’s Holding Back Aging Simulation?


Aging simulation supplies information about the long-term behavior before an IC enters into production, providing an important early evaluation of the reliability required by the application and specification. Re-designs due to reliability issues, and over-design with excessive safety margins, are avoided in this way. In addition, the long-term stability can be demonstrated to the customer. ... » read more

Aging Models: The Basis For Predicting Circuit Reliability


Today, many products are based on high-performance electronic systems and integrated circuits (ICs), and the importance of these elements is ever-increasing. A certain tension arises here as these applications often call for a large amount of processing power and reliability. The processing power can best be supplied with highly scaled semiconductor technologies. However, these manufacturing te... » read more