2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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infant mortality
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at
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large; this term is possibly techspeak by now) that the chances of sudden
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hardware failure drop off exponentially with a machine's time since first
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use (that is, until the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical
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wear in I/O devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated
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for the machine to start going senile). Up to half of all chip and wire
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failures happen within a new system's first few weeks; such failures are
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often referred to as infant mortality problems (or, occasionally, as sudden
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infant death syndrome ). See bathtub curve , burn-in period.
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