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.

Inspection System

[As of April, 2011]

The criticality of building in semiconductor product quality and reliability during the design and manufacturing phases has been explained earlier in this document. To confirm that quality control remains a top priority during each phase and to ensure the quality and reliability of the end product, Toshiba continues to monitor product quality and reliability after a comprehensive inspection of electrical characteristics is conducted in the manufacturing process.

Inspection

In-process intermediate inspections, final inspections, quality monitoring and reliability monitoring are all performed based on standardized internal regulations.
Figure 1 shows the inspection procedure.

This is [Figure 1 Inspection Procedure].

Figure 1 Inspection Procedure

Quality monitoring is used to verify the initial electrical characteristics and appearance of randomly selected sample products. This process assures the quality and reliability of shipped products.
On the other hand, reliability monitoring is used to verify the reliability level based on the end product process or package family type. The required reliability tests are therefore conducted in units of process or package family.
Changes in quality/reliability levels are reflected in the establishment of target failure rates, thereby aiding in level maintenance and improvement of the manufacturing process.

Acceptable Quality Levels

Toshiba, in principle, conducts random inspections during the initial distribution phase to ensure an AQL level compliant with the standards indicated in Table 1.

Table 1 Acceptable Quality levels (AQLs)
(AQL; ANSI Z1.4-1993 compliant)
(normal inspection by single sampling)
Item	Product Type
Item	Discrete/IC/LSI	Memory
Electrical Characteristics	0.15%	0.065%
Appearance	0.15%

Furthermore, because recent customer requirements have been raised to a level that cannot be verified by normal random inspection, Toshiba further improves quality and reliability levels by utilizing a method that controls the defect rate at the PPM level.

This is [Figure 2 Defect Rate Control Procedure].

Figure 2 Defect Rate Control Procedure