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)
Read Also:
- Infant mortality rate
infant mortality rate n. The ratio of the number of deaths in the first year of life to the number of live births occurring in the same population during the same period of time.
- Infant prodigy
noun 1. an exceptionally talented child
- Infantry
[in-fuh n-tree] /ˈɪn fən tri/ noun, plural infantries. 1. soldiers or military units that fight on foot, in modern times typically with rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortars, etc., as weapons. 2. a branch of an army composed of such soldiers. /ˈɪnfəntrɪ/ noun (pl) -tries 1. Abbreviation Inf, inf n. 1570s, from French infantrie, from older […]
- Infantry-fighting-vehicle
noun 1. a heavily armored combat vehicle, as a tank, used to carry infantry into battle and provide support. Abbreviation: IFV.
- Infantryman
[in-fuh n-tree-muh n] /ˈɪn fən tri mən/ noun, plural infantrymen. 1. a soldier of the . /ˈɪnfəntrɪmən/ noun (pl) -men 1. a soldier belonging to the infantry n. 1837, from infantry + man (n.).