But what the article describes, and what my experience as a VLSI designer is that as feature sizes decreases, being able to just be able to guarantee a specified lifetime given environmental limits (ambient and die temperature, voltage and current supply including stability etc) is a very hard problem. And is getting harder. Just the statistical variance in the wafer production process steps (amount of molecules deposited) will make migration harder to estimate and handle.
A few SiO2 molecules more or less in thickness of an oxide layer that is 10000 molecules thick is not very important. But when the layer is supposed to be 10 molecules thick, 12 or 8 molecules corresponds to a huge difference in leakage.
So stating a minimum lifetime is what you do. A lifetime where at least 99% (or so) of the device still works reliably. Not to increase sales, but to avoid getting class action suits, having to pay out too much in refund, replace devices etc.
I haven't seen the latest stuff so maybe things have change significantly with the new MCMs in the last 3 years, but I'm doubtful.
If I had to guess, these failures are at the power connections and so the solution is just more connections since the migration is very nonlinear with temp & current.
Which isn’t necessarily bad of course, but it requires political willpower to put in place. Otherwise you’re just dealing with organizations like consumer reports trying to do their own analysis and lift the curtain, but that’s not nearly as effective as a nutrition facts style label mandated to be right on the box.
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...
Ironic, because in pretty much all other respects, Dubai is a solid kick in the knackers to the environment.
That was a few years ago, but now they do have a "high efficiency" version available everywhere that has a similar power density, but uses a more failure-prone traditional SMPS instead of the simpler regulator in the Dubai version.
In a lightbulb the power electronics, LEDs, etc. are all squished into a tiny package that struggles to shed heat.
I have a 15 year old led desk lamp from Philips. The Power supply is separate, the LEDs are attached to a heatsink. It could be taken apart and components replaced if someone is handy. Modern xiaomi desk lamps, ceiling spotlights and light fitting with integrated lefd are decent as well, LEDs are not overheating.
The "good" news is that lots of stuff will never get as far as an exciting excursion into unanticipated solid-state physical regimes and instead will become junk much earlier when the app no longer accepts it or the server is turned off (cough Hive)