Stephen Meats's Page

It’s that DfM time of year again. Not that DfM is specific to any time of year, but NMI’s annual event on this topic is coming up this week in Bristol. Entitled “Application Aware – Challenging DfM Conventions”, it promises a focus on the end product, and includes speakers from the Telecommunications Industry.

I am pleased to see there is a panel session on “Philosophy of DfM – Significantly More Than Tools”. My personal philosophy of Design for Manufacture, or any element of Design for X (DfX)… Continue

I recently attended an excellent Reliability Seminar and Workshop at the University of Greenwich (14-15 September) http://reliability-outreach.gre.ac.uk/. A wide range of topics was covered including Software Assurance, MEMS, and Six Sigma Techniques. For the purpose of this article I will concentrate on the subject matter relating to Reliability Assurance.

I have previously emphasised the importance of Design for Reliability,… Continue

With the Second International Conference on CMOS Variability starting on 12th May, my thoughts are turning to the impact of scaling on device reliability.

A memorable presentation I saw on this topic was given in October 2008 by Prof Asen Asenov at NMI’s Design for Manufacture Technical Network in Cambridge. The visual impact of one of the slides has stayed with me as it clearly showed the increasing significance of individual atoms (whether intentional dopants or random defects) as the size of… Continue

Over 20 years ago I was asked to perform a Reliability Qualification on a finished product, almost as an afterthought - a necessary evil to make the product saleable ! These days most of us expect to perform qualification work on first silicon, and to have done some kind of peer review on the design before tape out.

But when exactly in the product creation process should the Reliability function become involved? I would expect most people these days to answer, "In the design phase", but we real… Continue