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Effects like this make it easier to design ICs that last just long enough to get past the warranty period. I still remember when the electronics industry very s

Effects like this make it easier to design ICs that last just long enough to get past the warranty period. I still remember when the electronics industry very strongly advertised the new "solid state" technology as lasting "forever" (in contrast to the vacuum tubes common at the time), but just as with LED lighting, that turned out to be very false.

BenjiWiebe 3y ago
LED lighting can last "forever", but if you cheap out on power supply components and overdrive your LEDs to get more brightness for less, they won't last.
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  Without consumer visibility into those factors it’s a classic market for lemons, though.
  - RachelF 3y ago
    indeed, it is hard to compete on quality in the long term.
    - klipt 3y ago
      If the incentive is to design for failure after the warranty expiry, isn't warranty length a good proxy for quality?
      - worewood 3y ago
        No, because the amount of people that actually follow through the warranty vs. just buying a new lamp is so small, that even with a bad product it's worth the cost of covering them.
        mikepurvis 3y ago
        Yeah, the only real way to fix this proactively is mandatory labeling and that requires a lot of regulatory oversight to see through. Which isn’t necessarily bad of course, but it requires political willpower to put in place. Otherwise you’re just dealing with organizations like consumer reports trying to do their own analysis and lift the curtain, but that’s not nearly as effective as a nutrition facts style label mandated to be right on the box.
        kevinventullo 3y ago
        Wouldn’t this also upwardly shift the economically optimal warranty period for high quality products?
    - callalex 3y ago
      This isn’t even long term though. Every GE bulb I have purchased (8 bulbs of different styles from different stores) has failed in less than a year. I will never buy another GE lighting product again for the rest of my life.
      - mikepurvis 3y ago
        As far as brands go, I've been decently happy with Philips, but yeah everything else is a crapshoot— Feit Electric I've had several failures, same with Ikea bulbs.
- gravescale 3y ago
  Obligitory link to the UAE edition Philips bulb that you can't get anywhere else because they don't overdrive it to thermal death and it lasts forever, but between that and being locked out of the whole market there, maybe just turn the current down a smidge for radically longer life. https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-lights-you-cant-buy/ https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li... Ironic, because in pretty much all other respects, Dubai is a solid kick in the knackers to the environment.
  - jdewerd 3y ago
    I dunno, working hard to prevent the spread of an environmentally friendly innovation to maintain bragging rights rather than trying to spread it as far and wide as possible sounds like a very Dubai kick in the environmental knackers to me.
    - userbinator 3y ago
      It's Philips who doesn't want them sold elsewhere, not Dubai. That was a few years ago, but now they do have a "high efficiency" version available everywhere that has a similar power density, but uses a more failure-prone traditional SMPS instead of the simpler regulator in the Dubai version.
      - jdewerd 3y ago
        Oh good. I could have sworn I heard that the timed exclusivity requirement came from the Dubai side, but in any case I am glad to hear that they are more widely available now.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  LED lightbulbs are terrible but good LED lamps and fittings do last forever! In a lightbulb the power electronics, LEDs, etc. are all squished into a tiny package that struggles to shed heat. I have a 15 year old led desk lamp from Philips. The Power supply is separate, the LEDs are attached to a heatsink. It could be taken apart and components replaced if someone is handy. Modern xiaomi desk lamps, ceiling spotlights and light fitting with integrated lefd are decent as well, LEDs are not overheating.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gravescale 3y ago
Yep, and so much is integrated now, so an average design is a bunch of tiny black squares in close formation under software control, it's very difficult to diagnose the dead component unless you are very intimate with the design or you get lucky it's failed short and the controller doesn't turn it off so it shows up thermally. The "good" news is that lots of stuff will never get as far as an exciting excursion into unanticipated solid-state physical regimes and instead will become junk much earlier when the app no longer accepts it or the server is turned off (cough Hive)
JoachimS 3y ago
Well, yes. Planned obsolescence and all that. But what the article describes, and what my experience as a VLSI designer is that as feature sizes decreases, being able to just be able to guarantee a specified lifetime given environmental limits (ambient and die temperature, voltage and current supply including stability etc) is a very hard problem. And is getting harder. Just the statistical variance in the wafer production process steps (amount of molecules deposited) will make migration harder to estimate and handle. A few SiO2 molecules more or less in thickness of an oxide layer that is 10000 molecules thick is not very important. But when the layer is supposed to be 10 molecules thick, 12 or 8 molecules corresponds to a huge difference in leakage. So stating a minimum lifetime is what you do. A lifetime where at least 99% (or so) of the device still works reliably. Not to increase sales, but to avoid getting class action suits, having to pay out too much in refund, replace devices etc.
- kurthr 3y ago
  The article describes package failures mostly near TSVs and solder bumps presumably at the connections between chips not the oxide layers. In my experience these BEOL are a few micron metal min feature size for the routing/vias and larger for bumps. I haven't seen the latest stuff so maybe things have change significantly with the new MCMs in the last 3 years, but I'm doubtful. If I had to guess, these failures are at the power connections and so the solution is just more connections since the migration is very nonlinear with temp & current.
Kirby64 3y ago
Individual semiconductors everywhere I’ve seen (I work in that industry) still generally design for lifespans that are at minimum 10 years under worst case conditions (which is typically worse process corner plus worst temperature). I don’t think there’s much risk of having that bar drop all the way to a typical 1 year warranty period.

BenjiWiebe 3y ago

LED lighting can last "forever", but if you cheap out on power supply components and overdrive your LEDs to get more brightness for less, they won't last.

mikepurvis 3y ago
Without consumer visibility into those factors it’s a classic market for lemons, though.
- RachelF 3y ago
  indeed, it is hard to compete on quality in the long term.
  - klipt 3y ago
    If the incentive is to design for failure after the warranty expiry, isn't warranty length a good proxy for quality?
    - worewood 3y ago
      No, because the amount of people that actually follow through the warranty vs. just buying a new lamp is so small, that even with a bad product it's worth the cost of covering them.
      - mikepurvis 3y ago
        Yeah, the only real way to fix this proactively is mandatory labeling and that requires a lot of regulatory oversight to see through. Which isn’t necessarily bad of course, but it requires political willpower to put in place. Otherwise you’re just dealing with organizations like consumer reports trying to do their own analysis and lift the curtain, but that’s not nearly as effective as a nutrition facts style label mandated to be right on the box.
      - kevinventullo 3y ago
        Wouldn’t this also upwardly shift the economically optimal warranty period for high quality products?
  - callalex 3y ago
    This isn’t even long term though. Every GE bulb I have purchased (8 bulbs of different styles from different stores) has failed in less than a year. I will never buy another GE lighting product again for the rest of my life.
    - mikepurvis 3y ago
      As far as brands go, I've been decently happy with Philips, but yeah everything else is a crapshoot— Feit Electric I've had several failures, same with Ikea bulbs.
gravescale 3y ago
Obligitory link to the UAE edition Philips bulb that you can't get anywhere else because they don't overdrive it to thermal death and it lasts forever, but between that and being locked out of the whole market there, maybe just turn the current down a smidge for radically longer life. https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-lights-you-cant-buy/ https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li... Ironic, because in pretty much all other respects, Dubai is a solid kick in the knackers to the environment.
- jdewerd 3y ago
  I dunno, working hard to prevent the spread of an environmentally friendly innovation to maintain bragging rights rather than trying to spread it as far and wide as possible sounds like a very Dubai kick in the environmental knackers to me.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    It's Philips who doesn't want them sold elsewhere, not Dubai. That was a few years ago, but now they do have a "high efficiency" version available everywhere that has a similar power density, but uses a more failure-prone traditional SMPS instead of the simpler regulator in the Dubai version.
    - jdewerd 3y ago
      Oh good. I could have sworn I heard that the timed exclusivity requirement came from the Dubai side, but in any case I am glad to hear that they are more widely available now.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
LED lightbulbs are terrible but good LED lamps and fittings do last forever! In a lightbulb the power electronics, LEDs, etc. are all squished into a tiny package that struggles to shed heat. I have a 15 year old led desk lamp from Philips. The Power supply is separate, the LEDs are attached to a heatsink. It could be taken apart and components replaced if someone is handy. Modern xiaomi desk lamps, ceiling spotlights and light fitting with integrated lefd are decent as well, LEDs are not overheating.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gravescale 3y ago

Yep, and so much is integrated now, so an average design is a bunch of tiny black squares in close formation under software control, it's very difficult to diagnose the dead component unless you are very intimate with the design or you get lucky it's failed short and the controller doesn't turn it off so it shows up thermally. The "good" news is that lots of stuff will never get as far as an exciting excursion into unanticipated solid-state physical regimes and instead will become junk much earlier when the app no longer accepts it or the server is turned off (cough Hive)

JoachimS 3y ago

Well, yes. Planned obsolescence and all that. But what the article describes, and what my experience as a VLSI designer is that as feature sizes decreases, being able to just be able to guarantee a specified lifetime given environmental limits (ambient and die temperature, voltage and current supply including stability etc) is a very hard problem. And is getting harder. Just the statistical variance in the wafer production process steps (amount of molecules deposited) will make migration harder to estimate and handle. A few SiO2 molecules more or less in thickness of an oxide layer that is 10000 molecules thick is not very important. But when the layer is supposed to be 10 molecules thick, 12 or 8 molecules corresponds to a huge difference in leakage. So stating a minimum lifetime is what you do. A lifetime where at least 99% (or so) of the device still works reliably. Not to increase sales, but to avoid getting class action suits, having to pay out too much in refund, replace devices etc.

kurthr 3y ago
The article describes package failures mostly near TSVs and solder bumps presumably at the connections between chips not the oxide layers. In my experience these BEOL are a few micron metal min feature size for the routing/vias and larger for bumps. I haven't seen the latest stuff so maybe things have change significantly with the new MCMs in the last 3 years, but I'm doubtful. If I had to guess, these failures are at the power connections and so the solution is just more connections since the migration is very nonlinear with temp & current.

Kirby64 3y ago

Individual semiconductors everywhere I’ve seen (I work in that industry) still generally design for lifespans that are at minimum 10 years under worst case conditions (which is typically worse process corner plus worst temperature). I don’t think there’s much risk of having that bar drop all the way to a typical 1 year warranty period.