infant mortality
from
Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)
infant mortality
n.
It is common lore among hackers (and in the electronics industry at
large; this term is possibly techspeak by now) 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}.
from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
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)
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