Self-heating mechanism for duplicating microbump failure conditions in FPGAs and for logging failures

摘要

A system replicates the rapid temperature increases that are believed to cause microbump failures in certain applications of programmable logic devices (PLDs). The system configures a PLD under test with a circuit that switches a large amount of current and generates a large amount of heat when the circuit is clocked. The system monitors the temperature of the PLD and controls the switching of the circuit to achieve a predetermined temperature within a predetermined time period. The PLD is cooled, and the thermal cycling is repeated. The system detects microbump failures and communicates failure data to a computer for logging and analysis.