[time-nuts] 5070B once more.... (actually 5370A fans)

Hal Murray hmurray at megapathdsl.net
Fri May 22 20:11:32 UTC 2009


> The reason for the fans is to prevent premature failures of the
> silicon devices due to thermal degradation. The life of a silicon
> chip is halved for every 10C temperature increase, more or less. 

I was going to make a similar comment, but got sidetracked poking around 
google.  I didn't find a good/clean article.  Does anybody have a good URL?

Doubling every 10C is the normal recipe for chemical reactions.  I think that 
translated to IC failure rate back in the old days.  Is that still correct?  
Has modern quality control tracked down and eliminated most of the 
temperature dependent failure mechanisms?

I remember reading a paper 5 or 10 years ago.  The context was disks.  I think the main failure was electronics rather than mechanical.  It really really really helped to keep them cool.


-- 
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