Estimating integrated-circuit failure rates from field performance

Estimating the reliability of components in manufactured equipment has been hampered by the impracticability of experiments which collect failure data by tracking thousands of devices for years and by the unavailability of statistical software. Procedures used to extract 10/sup 11/ unaccelerated device hours of component field replacement data are described, along with statistical techniques used to estimate component failure rates from these data. The method captures, processes, and calculates any devices' failure rate from actual field performances and statistically analyzes time-to-failure data to estimate failure rates.<
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