PFI:AIR - TT: RelMaster: Towards a Reliability Simulation Toolset

此PFI：AIR技术翻译项目专注于翻译半导体可靠性模拟技术，以满足估计高可靠性项目寿命的需求。这在半导体行业的航空、汽车、医疗和航天领域尤其重要，因为这些产品的寿命必须远远超过其制造所使用的技术设计的寿命。可靠性模拟软件将通过降低加速寿命测试的电路故障风险来降低高可靠性半导体产品的成本和上市时间。加速寿命测试是在产品投放市场之前立即执行的。当电路未能通过加速寿命测试时，必须重新设计和重新制造，然后才能投放市场，成本高达数亿美元。这个项目将产生最低限度的可行产品，这是用于半导体电路寿命检查的软件。这项半导体可靠性仿真技术具有以下独特功能：该软件工作在系统级，涵盖前线和后线磨损机制，并可以结合客户定义的使用场景。与市场上领先的竞争可靠性模拟软件(仅涵盖设备型号中包含的设备级老化)相比，这些功能为磨损模拟问题提供了更完整的解决方案。该项目在从研究发现转化为商业应用的过程中解决了以下技术差距。这项工作包括三项任务，与标准工业方法的比较，根据实验数据调整模型的校准技术，以及改进模拟方法，使其能够扩展到大型工业设计。方法包括对电路使用加速测试，其中选择测试条件来隔离每个磨损机制，以便可以观察到由于各种磨损机制而导致的故障，这与工业标准实践不同。大规模设计的可伸缩性将在开发出将步骤纳入现有设计流程和自动化的方法后进行演示。其目标是展示合理的计算成本，并最大限度地减少对生产时间的影响。此外，参与该项目的人员(博士生)将通过与该项目的商业导师乔纳森·戈德曼合作，接受创新/创业/技术翻译培训。该项目与Aeroflex公司合作，在这项从研究发现到商业现实的技术转换工作中，演示了实验数据与模拟结果的校准。

This PFI: AIR Technology Translation project focuses on translating semiconductor reliability simulation technology to fill the need to estimate lifetimes of high-reliability projects. This is especially important in the aeronautics, automotive, medical, and space segments of the semiconductor industry because these products must achieve lifetimes well beyond those for which the technology used for their manufacturing was designed. The reliability simulation software will lower the cost and time-to-market of high reliability semiconductor products by mitigating the risk of circuit failures of accelerated lifetime tests, which are performed immediately prior to releasing a product to market. When a circuit fails accelerated lifetime tests, it must be re-designed and re-manufactured prior to release to the marketplace, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. This project will result in a minimum viable product, which is software for a lifetime check for semiconductor circuits. This semiconductor reliability simulation technology has the following unique features: the software works at the system level, covers both front-of-line and back-of-line wearout mechanisms, and can incorporate customer-defined use scenarios. These features provide a more complete solution to the wearout simulation problem when compared with the leading competing reliability simulation software in the market space (covering only device-level aging incorporated in device models). This project addresses the following technology gaps as it translates from research discovery toward commercial application. The work incorporates three tasks, a comparison with standard industrial methodologies, calibration techniques for adjusting models to experimental data, and refinement of the simulation methodologies to enable scalability to large industrial designs. Approaches include the use of accelerated tests for circuits, where test conditions are selected to isolate each wearout mechanism, so that failures due to a wide variety of wearout mechanisms can be observed, unlike industrial standard practice. Scalability to large-scale designs will be demonstrated after development of methods to incorporate steps in the existing design flow and automation. The goal is to demonstrate a reasonable computational cost and minimal impact on time-to-tapeout. In addition, personnel involved in this project (Ph.D. students) will receive innovation/entrepreneurship/technology translation training through working with the project's business mentor, Jonathan Goldman. This project engages Aeroflex Corporation to demonstrate calibration of the experimental data to simulation results in this technology translation effort from research discovery towards commercial reality.