infant mortality
<hardware> It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics
industry at large) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off
exponentially with a machine's time since first use (that is, until the
relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O devices and
thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated for the machine to start
going senile). Up to half of all chip and wire failures happen within a new
system's first few weeks; such failures are often referred to as "infant
mortality" problems (or, occasionally, as "sudden infant death syndrome").
See bathtub curve, burn-in period.
[Jargon File]
(1995-03-20)
Nearby terms:
Industry Standard Architecture « inetd « inews «
infant mortality » infeasible path » inference »
inference engine
|
