Thermal HALT

Abstract

Kirk and Fred discuss a paper Kirk wrote about how thermal HALT can be a tool for finding marginal signal integrity issues.

Key Points

Join Kirk and Fred as they discuss Kirk’s paper on the use of thermal HALT, initially posted on Kirk’s website, acceleratedreliabilitysolutions.com, in 2018, and a re-edited version that Fred recently posted on Accendo Reliability’s website. You can find a link to the article in the show notes below.

Topics include:

• Kirk found little when he researched for information and data about how the physical electronics, especially the PWBA (printed wiring board assemblies) in high-speed digital systems, the variations in the board layers, and the surface roughness of the wiring traces affect the quality of the signal integrity (SI).  
• As data bus speeds increase, effects causing errors in data transmission that were not significant at the time (when bus frequencies were in the megahertz range) became dominant at the gigahertz frequencies of today’s digital systems. Interconnect resistance, capacitance, and inductance are frequency-dependent, and as bus speeds increase and geometries continue to shrink, these variables may prove difficult– if not impossible– to model accurately.  
• Thermal HALT and varying voltage and  clock margins may simulate the lot-to-lot parametric variations in semiconductors and PWBA’s, resulting in SI errors, but since few companies disclose their most useful methodologies, published data remains scarce

Enjoy an episode of Speaking of Reliability. Where you can join friends as they discuss reliability topics. Join us as we discuss topics ranging from design for reliability techniques to field data analysis approaches.

SOR 1029 Thermal HALTKirk Gray

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Show Notes

Here is the link to Kirk’s article on Thermal HALT -A Tool for the Discovery of Signal Integrity and Software Reliability Issues on Accendo Reliability

Please click on this link to access a relatively new analysis of traditional reliability prediction methods article from the US ARMY and CALCE titled  “Reliability Prediction – Continued Reliance on a Misleading Approach”. It is in the public domain, so please distribute freely. Trying to predict reliability for development is a misleading a costly approach.

You can now purchase the most recent recording of Kirk Gray’s Hobbs Engineering 8 (two 4 hour sessions) hour Webinar “Rapid and Robust Reliability Development – 2022 HALT & HASS Methodologies Online Seminar” from this link.

For more information on the newest discovery testing methodology here is a link to the book “Next Generation HALT and HASS: Robust design of Electronics and Systems” written by Kirk Gray and John Paschkewitz.