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)