ABSTRACT
The main question posed in this paper is: should you expect a correlation between yield, quality, and reliability? The paper addresses this problem especially for integrated circuits and electronic assemblies.
The paper looks first at the somewhat scattered evidence of such correlations as published in the literature. The published results do not in themselves constitute a proof of this correlation, but they do indicate quite forcibly that a positive correlation exists between yield, quality, and reliability.
The latter part of the paper addresses recent models for yield and reliability prediction for integrated circuits in particular. The models have a common basis, the inherent defects of the component, and the paper argues that these first-order models indeed do tie yield and reliability together.
