Track 1 Session 2

10:20 to 11:20 a.m. Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Building Reliability in Electronics Design Through Derating Analysis

With the ever-increasing complexity and functional density of electronic products, achieving product reliability is highly rewarding as it adds a significant competitive advantage. Therefore, building reliability into complex designs is one of the critical challenges continuously encountered by design teams. It is typically found that more than 70% of the common reliability concerns in electronics design are primarily due to component ratings, while factors like incorrect requirements and architectural issues only contribute to poor reliability to some extent. Therefore, a proactive approach to uncover the concerns early in the program is need of the development instead of relying on the Test-Analyze and Fix (TAAF) approach. Derating analysis is one of the most powerful reliability tools and, when deployed in early design stage (preferably prior to realization of hardware), unearths critical component stress related issues and thereby avoids significant efforts spent in multiple design spins.

Key Words: Derating Analysis, Reliability, Component Selection, Thermal Stress

Nabajit Deka

Honeywell Technology Solutions Lab