Static damage of modern 1.8V, 2.5V, and 3.3V ICs manfactured with the ever finer and finer process geometries has made static damage a much greater concern as compared to 5 volt logic of 10 years ago. If you compare the packaging materials used to transport ICs today as compared to what was used 10 years ago you will see that there is greater concern today than a while back. This packaging costs a lot of money and would not be used if it was not necessary.

Look at the packaging used on circuit boards and modules today as compared to 10 years ago. Everything is in robust antistatic bags now days. I can recall a time when an addin circuit board was simply stuffed inside a slot in the cardboard of the store carton.

If you visit a modern day contract manufacturing facility and see all the procedures that they have in place deal with static electricity it can be almost amazing to those who have never been there. Compare that with what you would see at a similar facility of the 10 or 12 years ago and you can instantly conclude that static electricity is a bigger concern today now than before. These procedures cost money to implement and monitor. The facilities would not spend this money of the procedures were not necessary.

It is true that is you compare a 5 volt logic gate of say a 1978 vintage RCA CD4002A CMOS logic package to the logic gate in a 1998 vintage 74HC4002 5 volt logic package there is a night and day difference between the static resistance of the two parts. The static electricity concerns of today are not based upon this comparison. It is the smaller process geometries that have made it a bigger problem today than it was 10 years ago. Those smaller geometries have brought us all the amazing high speed and ever lowering costs for our electronics gadgets. But static handling is a bigger concern today than it has ever been.

Smaller and smaller amounts of static electricity can damage the internals of ever more increasingly complex ICs. At the PC board level it was common 15 years ago to see all I/Os of a board buffered and implemented in 5 volt bipolar 'LS technology. These days the typical PC add-in board is single very high density IC chip that connects to all the connectors of the board directly and that board may run on 3.3 volts or less. That lower voltage is a clue that the board has finer geometry logic and that it must be handled more carefully.

Yes static handling is a big concern today and to say that it is not is fool hardy.

MICHAEL KARAS