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IC Failures Linked to Resin Series?
MEW writes "According to this article, 'the semiconductor industry began using red phosphorus as a flame retardant instead of the Br-based compound it had used for years,' due to environmental concerns. By July 2002, 1000 tons of the stuff was used for about a billion chips, when they stopped due to high component failures. In particular Sumitomo Bakelite caused rampant failures in Fujitsu disk drives. There's still a lot of Sumitomo Bakelite out there, and we may see the worst of it soon, as components start to fail prematurely. This was posted by Spaceman on Macintouch who says that the bad material accounts for 'half the world's supply of 'IC Plastics'' and can result in 'sudden or premature end of life.'"
Nah, thats white phosphorous your thinking about.
I could be wrong. I'm always wrong...
first the leaky capacitors, now this. any way to find out exactly what this material went into? like a list of manufacturers using it? i bet not right! btw this was published in December 2002.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
hey you never know ;)
Any equipment, from a single transistor to a microprocessor, that is used in life-support systems have a whole different qualification process, and the parameters are much stricter. I know that space-qualified chips often have their own fabrication process that is different than normal chips to make them radiation-hardened; I wouldn't be suprised if chips that are meant to be put into someone's body are fabricated using an older, more stable process, which wouldn't have had this change in the first place.
And anything that doesn't make money when it's not available (like an ATM machine) will have scads of redundancy built in. If chips are dying in the field, odds are it's only resulting in more service calls, and perhaps marginally more downtime.
I would think that some of the newer chips for game systems and PCs would be the first to show any ill effects from this problem, since they're likely to be in the newest processes to get the best transistor density. But it all depends on who fabbed the chip (which in all likelihood is different than who's logo appears on it), and whether they were using this process change at the time.
Broken Window Fallacy
Read it, learn it, love it, spread it.
The foam on the last space shuttle was used because it was more environmentally friendly, even though it was inferior. At least that's what I read (just put 'space shuttle foam environment' into google).
I expect you read this article in Capitalist Magazine. The title of the article, "Earth Worshippers Cause Death in Space", really brings home the high levels of dispassionate reporting and journalistic integrity enjoyed by the magazine. Truly, everything they say must be true.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
They got rid of CFCs, which is undoubtedly a good thing. Interestingly, the #1 ozone layer killer now is entirely natural: farts. A cow produces around a gallon of methane per day, no idea how much the average human farts during 24 hours.
Protecting the environment is always a good thing, however, people should see the entire picture first before starting nonsensical actions. If the attempt to preserve nature turns out to cause even more harm to it, then this attempt should honestly be marked as a failure -- instead of proceeding with it for political reasons.
For the SciFi readers, I (again) recommend "Fallen Angels" by Larry Niven et al.
no, no. Of course white phosphorous is even more reactive and may even ignite itself when in contact with oxygen. But red phsphorous burns pretty good, too. makes a lot of smoke as well (good for smoke bombs, the smoke forms phosphoric acid thogether with the air humidity though) and together with potassium chlorate (KCl03) it makes nice explosions.
here is a link to a chemicals supplier. notice the risk statements: R11 = Highly flammable, R16 = Explosive when mixed with oxidizing substances
the most sexp i get is my paren-mode.
Red phosphorus is mixed with the packaging resin, which encases chip die and lead frame. It's about 2-3% of that black plastic.
Apparently red phospherus enables an internal short, probably by reacting with the resin to make a carbon channel. This is my best guess, given the info we have.
The majority of US chip companies these days are just design labs. They hire Asian chip foundries to actually render their designs to product, and it appears that they are the manufacturer. More and more the large chipmakers are doing this too -- farming out production. This new process would be used on commodity chips first, like logic and memory. Unlikely to be in high-end chips like processors, A/D, etc.
Some here deride the environmental reasoning for the change. It's pretty stupid to not care about dioxin, no matter where it is. These Exxon fascists would also say that global warming is a myth, because it's cold today... well it's warmer than it was 20 years ago. In about 30 years, you'll be paying for dikes to protect New York and Los Angeles from being flooded, ignorant bastard. Weather will be erratic and catastrophic. But that's not your problem today, now is it? Anti-environmental/anti-intellectual clods should be the ones who suffer for their short-sighted ignorant views, not the world as a whole. But unfortunately that's not how things work.
Campaign finance reform is national security.
Yes, I too pine for the days of leaded gasoline, lead pipes, CCA-treated lumber and asbestos!
And really, boiling down the two shuttle failures to material replacements? Perhaps a more important factor is its design.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
The classic example of this was the conversion of the basic "hamburger box" by McDonalds....
... "The manufacturing process uses other resources, too--one study estimates that manufacturing a Styrofoam clamshell uses 30 percent less energy, and generates 46 percent less air pollution and 42 percent less water pollution, than does manufacturing a paperboard box."
"In November 1990 the McDonald's Corporation, largely in response to pressure from the public and from environmental groups, made the decision to replace Styrofoam "clamshell" hamburger containers with paperboard boxes."
Not to mention the paper box insulates poorly, requiring more heat-lamp energy; and because paper has to be treated to repel grease, it decomposes slower than normal paper, and could not be recycled like the plastic-based styrofoam could.
When people save 5-10% at Walmart, they are reducing the circulation of money in the US, which depresses the economy as a whole.
Oh, come on. Thrifty shopping does not harm the economy. If I save $5 by finding a better deal at Walmart or anywhere else, I now have $5 left over which I'll either spend on something else or invest. Your argument is one of the many forms of the broken window fallacy.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
The broken window fallicy is a non-sequitor.
Broken window fallacy: some kid throws a rock through my window. I pay $100 to have it repaired. This is good for the economy because the window repairman makes an additional $100.
Walmart-is-bad theory: I buy a widget at Walmart for $10. This hurts the economy, because if I'd bought from the local Steve's Sprockets for $15 then Steve would have made an additional $5.
Both are wrong, and for exactly the same reason; they fail to account for what I would have done with the $100 had my window not been broken, and what I will do with the $5 that I saved at Walmart.
The economics of Wal-mart is a textbook case of predatory pricing.
Walmart is earning a profit, so they're clearly not selling below cost. Perhaps you're claiming that they're a monopsony (buying monopoly), which is easily disproven by the abundance of alternatives. If their market share ever approaches Microsoft levels, I'll take another look. In the meantime, lower prices are good.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Within Walmart's business practices are the hidden costs: a strong deflationary cycle that removes more value from the overall system
And I'm saying that's not the case. The money saved by consumers by shopping at Walmart doesn't just disappear; it's spent on other stuff or invested.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.