Advanced testing and prognostics of Ball Grid Array (BGA) components with a stand-alone monitor IC

Ball grid array (BGA) packages have gained wide acceptance for use with FPGAs and the devices are used extensively for digital electronic designs. While these packages provide high interconnect densities, they rely upon an array of closely-spaced solder balls that are subject to cracking, oxidation and eventual failure. These solder joints can contribute to costly intermittencies that drive ldquono fault foundrdquo types of situations higher in the service depots. To overcome these intermittency problems, this paper presents a novel, stand-alone integrated circuit (IC) to be applied in systems for detection and isolation of intermittency faults in FPGAs. Because the detected faults are isolated before the FPGA begins to exhibit an intermittent failure, this provides more comprehensive approaches to supporting condition-based maintenance (CBM) and enterprise health management (EHM) objectives for critical military/aerospace applications.