Agilex 7 FPGA Short-Circuited Without Physical Damage – Need Guidance

Hi,

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For your questions 2 and 3, I think the suggestion we can give should be based on the exact failure symptom. Could you please confirm the following information?

1- Did you measure certain Test Point on the board to confirm the "short"? What are the FPGA pins related to the "short" point?

2- What is the exact failure you observed? Did you observe a specific functional failure? Are there some abnormal output signals? Or basically there's no function working?

3- Did you check the configuration status of FPGA? If you try to detect and program the FPGA with Quartus Programmer, is there any error message in Programmer?

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For your question 1.

Actually, according to functional failure cases reported by other customers, it is quite rare for us to see physical damage. Even for some units with a lot of pins short to ground, there's actually no visible damage.

Some examples below may cause visible damage, but it still depends on the severity:

-- Mechanical/Thermal induced: The unit was subjected to physical damage. The unit was subjected to high temperature reflow/rework process before baking to clear the humidity. (I think for such cases, customer generally do not find us. )

-- Electrical Induced: The unit was subjected to excessively long term of high current.

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Best Regards,

Xiaoyan

Hi,

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1- Regarding the behavior that "there's a high current after DDR4 switched to full address range", as checked with our DDR related experts, we didn't see such issue before. When the address ranged expanded, only 1 or 2 address bits would be changed from 0 to 1, which normally won't lead to a significant change to the total current.

Did you also checked whether these DDR address pins are short or not?

When you are testing limited address range, is the DDR functioning normally?

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2- Regarding RMA or Failure analysis, please check this page: FPGA Functional/Failure Analysis, Quality, and Reliability Support |... .

For Agilex 7 device, we can support Failure Analysis support. However, for your specific case, as the device was already massively damaged internally, what the FA can only do Short/Open/leakage test. Functional tests are definitely not applicable. Further tests like Physical check will not be supported, as there would have been massive burn inside of the unit. Even if we do physical check on the unit, it is almost impossible to understand what is the cause of the short from the device itself.

Therefore, please consider what your expectation is. If the open/short test to confirm the failing pins could meet your needs, then we can apply for failure analysis.

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3- In cases of massive short failures, it is generally unlikely that the root cause is an internal silicon defect within the FPGA.

While theoretically possible, silicon defects typically have limited impact under normal conditions and aren't expected to cause extensive external pin-level shorts based on our known cases.

External factors such as excessive electrostatic discharge (ESD) / Electrical Overstress (EOS) or improper handling and testing are more likely to result in large-scale pin-level short circuits. As there are multiple voltage supply pins short, I would recommend you to pay attention to the power supply on your other good boards, do some tests such as monitor the power-up sequence and check whether the power supply has any overshoot during the FPGA operation.

If this is a prototype board, then you may also need to review your PCB design and check whether the manufacturing and testing environment did have good protection to the board.

Best Regards,

Xiaoyan

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

1. Yes, the DDR functioned normally when the DDR address was limited.

2. No, I haven't checked the DDR address pins after the short circuit happened.
   
   (Note: This test was done before the short circuit occurred in the FPGA.)

3. I understand that Failure Analysis (open/short/leakage tests) can be done.
   Yes, I would like to proceed with those tests to identify any failing pins.
   Please let me know the next steps.

Hi,

I kindly fill in the DPR form and provide answer to the questions that I have send through forum email.

Regards,

Aiman

Hi,

Who is your distributor/ local sales that you purchase the device from?

Regards,

Aiman

Hi,

Do you have any update?

Regards,

Aiman

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