Semiconductor Error Logging With Stress Correlation for Failure Analysis
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing techniques for analyzing device failures focusing on cumulative stress may not effectively identify the type of error leading to failure, limiting the usefulness of analysis results, especially in high-reliability devices with functional safety mechanisms, where predictive maintenance data is crucial.
Innovation Solution
A semiconductor device with an analysis data storage unit that associates error information with stress accumulated values at the time of error occurrence, enabling more comprehensive analysis by storing this data for predictive maintenance, including both error-causing and non-error-causing stress data.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If functional safety mechanisms are provided to prevent errors from occurring as failures, then device reliability is improved, but the ability to obtain useful analysis data for predictive maintenance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by storing error information and stress accumulated values in advance before failures occur. The analysis data storage unit continuously records error information (step S102) and stress accumulated values (step S105) during device operation, so that when a failure eventually occurs, comprehensive data is already available for predictive maintenance analysis, thus resolving the information loss caused by functional safety mechanisms preventing failures.
2Device complexity
If only cumulative stress data is stored for failure analysis, then storage complexity is reduced, but the precision of error cause identification deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple data types into a unified analysis data storage unit. It combines error information (step S102) with stress accumulated values (step S105) into associated data structures (step S103), creating a comprehensive dataset that links specific errors with their corresponding stress levels. This merging enables precise error cause identification while maintaining manageable storage complexity through systematic data organization.
Data Source
AI summary
The semiconductor device has a module having a predetermined function, an error information acquisition circuit for acquiring error information about an error occurring in the module, a stress acquisition circuit for acquiring a stress accumulated value as an accumulated value of stress applied to the semiconductor device, and an analysis data storage for storing analysis data as data for analyzing the state of the semiconductor device, the error information and the stress accumulated value at the time of occurrence of the error being associated with each other.