Soft Errors and No Trouble Found

September 26, 2011 | Leave a Comment

As electronic systems become more complex, troubleshooting manufacturing and field failures becomes more difficult. Hard failures (i.e. permanent changes in a device that lead to reproducible failures) are straightforward to isolate and determine a root cause. The more problematic area is “no trouble found” or NTF – meaning the original failure is difficult (if not [...]

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The Case of the Malnourished Zener Diode

September 7, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Zener diodes are among the most misunderstood and misused parts in electronic systems. How can this be? You might ask. The diode only has two connections, run some current through it, and it simply clamps to a specific voltage. Couldn’t be easier. End of story. Maybe. This is the tale of a 50 mHz. low [...]