On 08/10/2015 05:41 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
Plastics and several insulators degrade.
The long term !FAIL! was solder joints. that was one reason for a) component density, ultimately to 'chips' b) flow-soldered PCBs, to get better 1) solder mix and 2) consistency "Yes it used to be but we changed all that". Once that was addressed, what was next on the list? A couple of years ago I came across and speculative paper from the ... was it Bell System Journal or some IBM paper ... anyway .. It talked of the future computers being 'hot fuzzy golf-balls. Golf-ball sized 'cos of the level of integration Fuzzy 'cos of the wires to do the IO Hot 'cos of the power density. Nobody, it seems, thought that even though UNIX came out of Bell, it would be powering the "not a hot fuzzy golf-ball" that are cell phones. Which are mostly plastic. Many of our older beliefs about material engineering get overthrown. I've had mobos fail but never from blown capacitors. I've had PSUs fail, but it turned out to be fuses in an inaccessible place. I've had memory fail, but !not! through handling without a static guard. Sometimes I wish David Cheriton's V system had been developed so we could have RAICs Redundant Arrays of CPUS with the Os really distributed across the network, rather than the stamp-and-repeat method we have now. We don't tolerate that kind of thing in programming any more, why should we tolerate it in hardware? Ah, dream on! -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org