Discussion group summary: "The decline and fall of semiconductor reliability"

Thirty attendees discussed for 90 minutes the following proposition: "We are seeing a decline in the support of reliability in terms of capital equipment, people, and funding." It should be recognized that participants at the workshop were supported by organizations that are willing to support reliability at least to the extent that permitted these attendees to attend. One could therefore argue that the results of the discussions reported here are skewed away from the proposition and toward the view that support for reliability is not declining. The reader is therefore cautioned about this potential for bias in drawing conclusions beyond the scope to the statemenb reported. The discussions began with several participants voicing support for the view that they are seeing significant decreases in support for, and interested in, reliability. Many others followed with the view that they had not seen any significant decline in the importance and support of reliability activities. Nevertheless, there were comments and observations offered in the back-and-forth discussions that followed, which indicated important changes were indeed taking place.