The PCB industry reliability summit.

In the last several years the interconnect technology industry has undergone numerous changes. Some of theses changes are small and hardly noticeable; others genuinely change the industry.

Recent changes like System in a Package (SIP) technology or the growth of large high I/O packages with multiple chips along with passive components integrated onto a substrate are making the reliability testing protocols for substrates unclear. Are the substrates components and testable under JEDEC standards or are they small PCBs testable to IPC standards?

Additionally the emergence of environmental regulations and the higher temperatures used in lead-free applications is causing a concern over the reliability testing protocols used.

Immediately after the latest IPC APEX/ Expo in Los Angeles in February, the IPC in partnership with iNEMI, HDPUG and GEIA sponsored a reliability summit.

There were over 45 companies represented at the meeting and the attendees heard presentations from the sponsoring organizations on their current reliability activities, and from OEMs and University Consortia.

Discussions at the end of the presentations centered around three levels of interest. The component level, the assembly or solder joint level, and at the substrate level.

Some of the topics discussed were:

* The current standards development process is typically two years long, yet the market is changing technology in six months.

* OEMs, and even the government through NIST, develop new test protocols to meet new product or market requirements. There is not a clear path to getting this new development information into industry standards in a market that changes so rapidly.

* New materials, manufacturing processes and designs can introduce new failure modes and eliminate existing failure modes, yet reliability evaluations remain unchanged.

* New and unusual market applications are growing. These markets are beyond the scope of the current protocols (medical implant applications, for example).

A follow-up meeting is being scheduled by IPC to put together scope statements, develop a tentative plan of attack and determine a champion for potential follow-on activities.

Three potential actions that came out of the summit so far are:

* Develop a guideline for reliability testing by market segment that would cover Design for Reliability

* Clearing House for reliability efforts

* Reliability for Dummies/Reliability 101

These may not be the only future activities, just the three that have proposed so far. It appears that the summit was a success and that there is genuine interest on the part of OEMs and the rest of the industry in improving the process of reliability protocol management.