Magnetic fields play hell on chips if any pc board has a wiskering problem the fields may cause a problem.
...if any pc board has a whiskering problem the fields may cause a problem..
Yeah, but whiskering is evident on post-accident microscopic examination. I find it hard to believe that the chips in cars that accelerated haven’t been through a thorough inspection. Maybe they have, but I haven’t heard anyone mention it.
Also, one would expect any whiskers to be distributed throughout the affected chip, so that it would malfunction in a variety of ways. Most wouldn’t result in uncontrolled acceleration—rather, the unit would exhibit a bunch of different failure modes. In that case, you’d expect the control system to have a reputation for general unreliability, which I don’t believe it has.
I know about this in "hermetic" military electronics, but do dendrites grow well in potted ICs?