Testonica coordinates just launched FP7 project BASTION

Today, an average family spends over 50 Euros of hidden costs annually on No-Failure-Found (NFF) investigations - a known problem of an unknown origin. Tomorrow, the electronic engine control system in a car will be dying after three-five years of operation due to CMOS aging. Actions are urgently needed!

In January 2014, work commenced on a European Union's 7th Framework Programme's collaborative research project FP7-ICT-2013-11-619871 BASTION (www.fp7-bastion.eu) BASTION - Board and SoC Test Instrumentation for Ageing and No Failure Found.

A group of European experts will unite their forces in BASTION to fight against aging and bring an NFF relief to the society. We will step into dark waters of unknown defects, uncertain fault coverage, unclassified field returns. We will build a new defect universe and string the faults into comprehensive classes. We will deeply study the mechanisms of ageing and reduce the semiconductor "wrinkles". A "magic wand" of embedded instrumentation and respective IEEE 1687 standard will help us to get under the hood and into the mechanics, build-up an ultra fast scalable error detection and localization infrastructure as well as integrate all heterogeneous methodologies and techniques into a homogeneous system.

BASTION brings together eight partners. Infineon (Germany), as the largest chip supplier to the automotive industry together with two high-tech SMEs, Aster Technologies (France) and Testonica Lab (Estonia), and five European universities: Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Universities of Twente (The Netherlands) and Lund (Sweden), Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia) and High School Hamm-Lippstadt (Germany) form the BASTION consortium being coordinated by Dr. Artur Jutman from Testonica Lab.

The project will complete in three years, at only a negligible fraction of costs wasted by society on NFF annually.