Industry Expert Blogs

When it comes to cars, safety and reliability are paramount. That’s why almost every single part of a car must meet standards and regulations designed for the specific stresses the component could face throughout its lifetime. This includes everything from engine components to the infotainment cluster to the window glass. Pretty much the only standard parts of a car that aren’t subject to such controls are the cup holders.

The strictest standards are those for safety-critical components like brakes, seatbelts and airbags, tires, steering systems, and engine control and monitoring. These systems must comply with multiple regulatory and industry standards – including passing crash and durability tests as well as compliance checks – because they directly impact passenger safety.

When it comes to vehicle electronics, there are similar strict reliability tests, especially with the increasing complexity and proliferation of technologies like advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). For integrated circuits (ICs) including microcontrollers (MCUs), sensors and memory chips, the qualification standard is called AEC-Q100.

AEC-Q100 is a stress test qualification established by the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC), an organization originally formed by Chrysler, Ford, and GM to establish common part qualification and system quality standards. The council provides an official document that outlines the AEC-Q100 qualification process called Stress Test for Qualification for Integrated Circuits.

If a device is qualified to AEC-Q100, it means that it has passed the specified stress tests and guarantees a certain level of quality/reliability. This makes AEC-Q100 qualification important not only for automotive applications; knowing a technology is AEC-Q100 qualified tells designers of all applications that it is very high quality, so they can feel more confident when using it.

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