Automated Detection and Characterization of ESD-Induced Soft Failures Using Image- and Audio-Based Methods

Audio- and image-based soft failure detection methods are developed, which can detect both severe failures (such as system hang) and subtle ones (such as glitch or a momentary disturbance on display). Incorporating the developed detection methods with a robotic ESD (electrostatic discharge) tester, we developed a fully automated soft failure investigation tool. Using this fully automated tool, we obtained failure-specific susceptibility maps for a camera (our target device). These susceptibility maps not only illustrated the sensitive locations of the device, they also showed what type of soft failure is correlated with which locations.