Integrated circuit reliability prediction based on physics-of-failure models in conjunction with field study

Microelectronics device reliability has been improving with every generation of technology whereas the density of the circuits continues to double approximately every 18 months. We studied field data gathered from a large fleet of mobile communications products that were deployed over a period of 8 years in order to examine the reliability trend in the field. We extrapolated the expected failure rate for a series of microprocessors and found a significant trend whereby the circuit failure rate increases approximately half the rate of the technology, going up by approximately √2 in that same 18 month period.