Unfortunately, I only work in Oxford (so long as the floods don't wash me away!) and didn't study here…hence the lack of scientific knowledge ;O)

We do have absolute ratings from the chip manufacturers, but I don't want to take their word for it. I’ve found datasheets (from various manufacturers) not be totally accurate on several occasions in the past. Basically we have a System On Chip that we want to get a nice warm fuzzy feeling about it’s operational thresholds so that when our customers ask us how hard we have pushed it, we can show them a comprehensive set of test results, which will hopefully give them a similar warm fuzzy feeling. Therefore I really want to thrash the processor as much as possible over a complete temperature and voltage range (possible known as a PVT test). I’m not really bothered about what fails, just that it has.