infant mortality
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)