Affordable superiority (slide) — in both the nation’s economy and in the nation’s defense — will depend in an unprecedented way on our ability to revolutionize the surety of electronics and microsystems.

I’m Ted Dellin, Deputy Director of Reliability at Sandia, and also a collaborator on roadmaps for the commercial industry and an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico.

Affordable economic superiority is dependent on our ability to sustain the electronics revolution. Today, the rapid advances in microelectronics, and also in integrated microsystems are outstripping our reliability capabilities and present a real very risk of increasing failure rates which could impede our ability to bring these new technologies to the marketplace.

Affordable defense superiority is dependent on a differentiated US ability to leverage the advances of a commercial electronics industry. The ability to assure the reliability of commercial electronics when used in defense applications is the critical issue that will make or break our leveraging strategy.

We can no longer afford to take for granted that the reliability of advanced electronics technologies. As indicated in the slide behind me, we need an unprecedented strategic focus on electronics reliability technologies and on partnerships to realize affordable US superiority.

I’d like to share our experience in strategic electronics reliability by focusing on 3 W’s:

• WHAT is science-based surety?
• WHEN in the technology development process should it occur
• And WHO needs to be involved.

WHAT

Level 3 Science-based surety engineering consists of three parts:

1. Finding all of relevant failure mechanisms
2. Deriving predictive models for those failure mechanisms
3. Developing model-based engineering capabilities to enable building in reliability

Although easy to describe, this is an exceptionally difficult, multidisciplinary technical grand challenge.

Examples of some of our advances include:

• Discovering methods to use the electrical nature of ICs to tell
• if they contain hard or latent defects
• and if they do, where the single microscopic defect is located
• Developing test structures to speed reliability characterization and model development
• And similar advancements in determining the vulnerability of electronics, like smart cards, to human attack

WHEN

Our experience also suggests that to be successful with new electronics technologies, the reliability issues need to be pushed much farther upstream into R&D than has been done historically. We call this approach Concurrent R&D because of its similarity to, and link with, Concurrent Engineering

Our first major application of the Concurrent R&D paradigm is our program in micromachines — microscopic motors, gears, mirrors and sensors — that will enable a broad range of new innovative new products. We have instituted an extensive, upstream reliability R&D program that ranges from fundamental studies of sticking at the microscopic level to the development of practical reliability and failure analysis capabilities.

WHO

I believe that only tractable, affordable way to develop these strategic technologies is through strategic partnering.

Our strategic industrial partnership program has focused on developing a differentiated ability to leverage the commercial industry. The industry is uninterested in our defense applications. However, they are very interested in our science-based reliability and failure analysis solutions. — despite of the fact that the industry is uninterested in our niche national security applications.

Academic partnering is also important. With the University of New Mexico we nationally televise a graduate level reliability, failure analysis or test course every semester. We are also research partners with the University of Maryland’s CALCE Center and others.

Despite the advances at Sandia and elsewhere, the reliability Science and Technology base is not keeping pace with the rapid advances in electronics. Unfortunately, we have never had a strategic, national focus on reliability S&T. What we need now is a strategic public and private program in electronics surety that is commensurate with its strategic importance to the nation. This investment will play an unprecedented role in deciding between Costly Mediocrity and Affordable Superiority in the nation’s security and the Nation’s Economy.

Questions and Comments || Acknowledgment and Disclaimer