Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/969348
32 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2018 Feature by James McLeish DFR SOLUTIONS The era of artificial intelligence-enabled autonomous vehicles is rapidly approaching. Numerous articles and papers have been writ- ten about the many technical challenges that need to be solved to achieve consistent func- tionality, performance, safety and dependabil- ity in autonomous vehicles. Extensive resources are being expended to address these "physics of success" issues that involve issues such as: • Sensor and data fusion required for situational awareness that includes high-resolution mapping, better vision systems, and high-capability LIDAR at reasonable costs • Co-existence with extreme weather conditions, aggressively rule-breaking humans, interference from other vehicles, pedestrians, animals, and large road debris • Ethics in unavoidable accidents • Hacking/jamming prevention • Achieving complex navigation capabilities on all road and traffic conditions After these operational issues are addressed, the next challenge will be achieving reliability and durability for years of service under harsh automotive conditions for the advanced elec- tronics technology that autonomous vehicles require. Hardware reliability-durability chal- lenges that need to be considered in AVs and other advanced vehicle electronic systems that will be discussed in detail are: 1. Flat no-lead/near-chip scale integrated circuits 2. Large, higher power, hotter-running integrated circuits 3. Warpage issues 1. Flat No-Lead/Near-Chip Scale Integrated Circuits Flat no-lead (FNL) IC packages are prob- ably the most popular semiconductor package today because of their low cost, small outline/ low profile form factor, and excellent electrical and thermal characteristics. Various versions and names of FNL IC exist such as: • DFN (dual flat no-lead)/QFN (quad-flat no-lead)