Ask HN: Why don't transistors in microchips fail?

Re:Ask HN: Why don't transistors in microchips fail? by jsprogrammer on Thursday July 09, 2015 @03:07PM (#9860040)

You are assuming a normal distribution of failures. A sufficiently evil company would design their failure curves to be as flat as possible until the warranty period expires and then rapidly increase to 100%.

The practice still makes no real long-term sense though. What do you do after `warranty_period` expires and no one wants to buy your products anymore?

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Re:Ask HN: Why don't transistors in microchips fail? by mhb on Thursday July 09, 2015 @03:15PM (#9860083)

Presumably, ceteris paribus, companies do attempt to design their failure curves to be as flat as possible. Otherwise they are wasting money on components which will survive longer than the whole product. (There is no One-Hoss Shay (http://holyjoe.org/poetry/holmes1.htm))

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