On July 1st, Toshiba Corporation's Semiconductor Company and Storage Products Company consolidated to form Semiconductor & Storage Products Company.This page describes reliability information of semiconductor products.

Reliability Concept

[As of April, 2011]

Defining and Quantifying Reliability

Since the beginning of industrial production, companies have strived to improve product reliability from the standpoint of quality, i.e., durability, product life, safety and serviceability. It is only since the 1950s, however, that companies have systematically addressed reliability. The increasing enhancement and complexity of machinery as well as the systemization of chemical plants and power systems have greatly increased the societal effects and dangers of failures and increased the importance of reliability as a quality characteristic. This has led to a move to find more quantitative methods of defining the abstract concept of reliability with the aim to improve and control the actual system and product reliability. According to Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS), reliability is defined as “the probability that an item will perform a required function under specified conditions for a specified period of time,” thereby promoting quantification.
It is important to note that reliability is defined as a characteristic of a product and is expressed as a probability which includes three independent concepts: [1] time, [2] spatial factors such as operating and environmental conditions, and [3] evaluation parameters for determining whether or not the product performs as specified (i.e., the definition of failure).