The Physics of Failure: Predicting Reliability in Electronic Components

A lot has been written about Moore's Law and the potential limitations of semiconductor design and manufacturing in the future. Can we really continue to double the number of transistors on a given-sized die every eighteen months? For the last 30 years, Moore's Law has held, but, we may be seeing the real limitations to future semiconductor development and to Moore's Law — severely shortened operational lifetimes of advanced chips. That, in turn, creates massive reliability problems for critical embedded systems in the future.