Calterah since 2018 has been certified to ISO 9001 standard, an international recognition of quality management and a commitment made to practices of international standards.
ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System Certificate Issued by SGS
As a dedicated fabless, we partner with professional suppliers in chip fabrication and testing, including foundries, packaging and testing factories, which is the cornerstone of our delivery of quality chips to customers.
Calterah is and will still be prudent and cautious in selecting suppliers and all the current partners in chip fabrication and testing have achieved the following certifications:
- ISO 9001
- IATF 16949
- ISO 14001
- ISO 45001
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Product Change Notification
In compliance with J-STD-046, Calterah issues PCNs to notify customers of major changes that affect the form, fit or function, or the quality or reliability of a product within 90 days ahead of the official implementation.
A PCN includes:
- PCN tracking number
- Calterah contact information
- Information of the affected product
- Detailed description
- Reason for change
- Anticipated impact
- Verification plan and results
- Sample availability date
- Projected production shipment date
For notifications of product changes to automotive-grade devices, Calterah complies with AEC-Q100 Rev-H and is working out a process following the relevant guidelines by ZVEI.
Product discontinuance
Calterah’s product discontinuance process complies with J-STD-048. After a PCN with regard to product discontinuance is officially issued, our schedule allows 12 months for the last order to take final delivery of obsolete products.
Supplier Quality Support
To deliver quality products and services to customers, Calterah as a fabless relies on the vital support from major suppliers such as foundries and packaging and testing factories.
We have a supplier quality team at Manufacturing Technology Center to drive our suppliers to proactively work towards our technical requirements and quality expectations. Calterah urges all suppliers to make systematic and ongoing improvement to their products and processes, in a bid to build a stable, efficient and reliable supply chain.
Minimum Requirements for Suppliers
- ISO 9001 Quality Systems Certification
- IATF 16949 Certification (applicable to automotive-grade chip manufacturing)
- Experience in mass production of similar products
- Compliance with Calterah’s requirements
- Change management in compliance with Calterah’s requirements
- Effective management of sub-suppliers
- Quick response to customer complaints
- Continuous improvement
Minimum Requirements for Critical Sub-Suppliers (of critical raw materials)
- ISO 9001 Quality Systems Certification
- IATF 16949 Certification (applicable to automotive-grade chip manufacturing)
- Compliance with Calterah’s requirements
Tools for Supplier Quality Management
- Quality agreement
- Supplier introduction audit
- Manufacturing data monitoring
- Monthly/Quarterly supplier performance management
- Annual supplier quality system audit and on-site audits
Continuous Improvement
The notion of continuous improvement has always been part of Calterah all along its development. Pursing excellence in products and services and improving continuously remain Calterah’s commitment to customers. By adopting the PDCA method, Calterah joins hands with its suppliers to exercise its dedication to continuously offering better products and services.
Continuous Improvement Process Tools employed by Calterah and its suppliers:
- Project experience knowledge base
- Internal audit
- Management review
- Customer audit
- Third-party audit
- Supplier performance management
- Supplier yearly audit
Failure Analysis
Calterah’s IC Failure Analysis (FA) process aims to identify the root cause of a device failure by electrical and physical means, so as to ensure the smooth transition to the mass production of a new product and continuously improve its functions and quality.
Calterah not only boasts an experienced product engineering team, but also works closely with top third-party labs to perform efficient and accurate FA.
FA Process
1. Background Information Collection
Once a faulty device is returned to Calterah, our product engineers will first confirm the failure with the customer-end or application-end, and then try to reproduce the failure and do some preparation like solder ball repair for further FA.
In this step, we collect the following information:
- When and at which manufacturing procedure the failure was observed; quantity of the affected devices and lot information
- Description of the failure or malfunction
- Onsite inspection record of the failing device, such as pictures of the appearance and X-Ray images
2. Electrical Verification
In this step, we will identify and locate the failing component through electrical methods, including ATE and I/V Curve measurement.
3. Non-Destructive Failure Mechanism
Once the failing component is located, non-destructive analysis will be conducted to determine whether or not there is a defect in the device package area covering the component, using X-ray, SAT (Scanning Acoustic Tomography), OM (Optical Microscopy), etc.
4. Destructive Failure Mechanism
If there is no defect in the package, we remove the device package to expose the silicon die for further analysis.
Several techniques are involved in the step. We stimulate the die with signals through the IO pads to detect the defective signals in the die. Once a defective signal has been found, a common technique used is to remove the package layers of the defective area, and probe under an electron microscope or do an elemental analysis to determine the physical defects.
5. FA Report
In the final step, we develop an improvement plan based on the FA results, so as to avoid latent failures of future products.
Apart from ISO 9001 Quality Management System, Calterah’s development process for functional safety related products also complies with ISO 26262. The tailored process follows a V-Model in development and verification. To achieve better functional safety management, we also invited ISO TÜV Rheinland as the third party to audit our process and gained the Functional Safety Management certificate in 2020.
Calterah Functional Safety Management Certificate (ASIL-D)
Calterah strictly follows the functional safety management processes to develop radar chips that shall be compliant with ISO 26262 standard. For example, after rigorous assessment by TÜV Rheinland, the Alps family members of mmWave radar sensor SoC chips have been certified as ASIL-B fully compliant, becoming China’s first to obtain the ISO 26262 full compliance certification. We are confident that our products can not only help customers reach safety goals of ADAS, but also reduce their time for passing high-level safety evaluation and therefore accelerate the New Product Introduction process and mass production.
Alps Family Functional Safety Certificate (ASIL-B)
Calterah develops most stringent and comprehensive reliability testing plans to deliver quality and reliable products to customers. We take advantage of qualified third-party testing resources to carry out the reliability testing in strict accordance with AEC-Q100 and provide reliability testing reports.
For more information, contact sales@calterah.com.
Qualification Summary
MTTF and FIT
ORT
Calterah employs an ongoing reliability monitoring plan to regularly monitor the reliability of products, the wafer manufacturing process and packaging technologies.
Sampling tests for reliability monitoring in different phases are planned as follows:
MSL
MSL rating defines the duration of products safely exposed at room temperature before high-temperature reflow soldering.
Refer to the J-STD-020 standard.
Product Shelf Life
The product shelf life depends on a number of factors, including the materials used in the product, storage conditions, moisture sensitivity levels, packaging method etc. Calterah has proved that its product shelf life exceeds three years under the conditions specified by J-STD-020 through the tests done on existing samples.
Board Level Reliability
Board Level Reliability Testing (BLRT) is used for evaluating the reliability of solder connections after mounting an IC package to a PCB to make sure a long product life.
Calterah uses BLRT to guarantee the high reliability of products after mounting to PCBs.
With the rapid growth of intelligent connected vehicles, the cybersecurity of intelligent automobiles is drawing more and more attention of the industry. Calterah has pioneered the establishment in China of cybersecurity management processes that comply with ISO/SAE 21434 for threat identification, attack prevention, design verification, and emergency response, etc. so as to help ensure the cybersecurity of customers’ products and has attained the Automotive Cybersecurity Management Certification issued by TÜV Rheinland.
Faced with increasing threats to information security globally, Calterah has established an information security management system certified compliant to ISO 27001 by TÜV Rheinland, to protect its core competitiveness and enhance trust from global customers and partners. Adhering to the information security policy of “We ensure legal compliance, data confidentiality, information integrity, and risk control and strive for continuous improvement”, Calterah has identified, evaluated, and controlled information security risks, guaranteeing the continuity of its business operation. Calterah is also constantly seeking improvement to better tackle ever-changing and complex information security challenges.
For information security issues, please reach us via is@calterah.com.
Calterah Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) is responsible for accepting and responding to security vulnerability reports with regard to Calterah products.
Security vulnerability report handling process
The process of handling submitted security vulnerability reports is as follows:
- Calterah acknowledges your report and processes it.
- Calterah evaluates the risk and impact of the reported vulnerability.
- Calterah takes actions to mitigate the verified vulnerability.
- Calterah discloses product vulnerabilities in the section Past vulnerability disclosure list, if appropriate.
Scope of security incidents
Calterah PSIRT handles the following cases:
- Security incidents involving Calterah products
- Flaws in security-related Calterah documents
- Security-related Calterah documents or information found in places where they should not be
- Security-related Calterah products found in places where they should not be
Report a security vulnerability
Calterah encourages you to send a report if you discover a potential security vulnerability related to Calterah products. You can report the potential security vulnerability to Calterah PSIRT at psirt@calterah.com. We strive to respond within one business day. Please report in English or Chinese, and provide the following information to help us perform a technical analysis of the vulnerability:
- Calterah hardware or software products potentially affected (including versions or revisions)
- How and when the potential vulnerability was discovered, and by whom
- Technical descriptions of the potential vulnerability
- Technical descriptions of the attack path
- Proposed mitigations or helpful suggestions
- Your contact information, e.g. email address, so that Calterah is able to ask any necessary follow-up questions
Vulnerability information is extremely sensitive. Calterah PSIRT strongly recommends encrypting security vulnerability reports before submission, using the PSIRT PGP/GPG key:
- Fingerprint: E95F 7D0B 6088 0E83 7F3B 4622 6DAB 53B1 39D9 3A00
- Public key file
You can use the following software to read and author PGP/GPG-encrypted messages:
Past vulnerability disclosure list
None
