Thread

1. colonwqbang · 1790678244 · focus · HN ↗

   When you think about it, 24 years is not such a long time for a machine to keep doing what it's supposed to be doing. It says something about our profession that we find a 24-year service life surprising.

   There are airliners that have been in service for over 50 years.

   1. VectorLock · 1790689250 · focus · HN ↗

      >There are airliners that have been in service for over 50 years.

      Are there any airliners that have flown for 24 years non-stop?

      1. serf · 1790690050 · focus · HN ↗

         this is why I find comparing mostly-solid-state stuff with big mechanical contraptions a frustrating exercise.

         it's more impressive to me that the electric fans within the Stratus server still operate than it is that the chips still work, and if we're going with the plane metaphor it's the silicon that puts the thing into the air, not the simple fans.

         So really it just boils down to "well, the planes work is harder." as to why it fails, which is of course abstract and unsatisfying; comparing the comparative lifetime workloads of a chip that has shifted trillions of bits versus some jet engines that have moved millions of kilograms around the world.

         and then another layer comes and makes it even weirder : the vast majority of hardware around the world that has been EoLd and replaced has been in that situation due to software, not the hardware itself; a paradigm that really doesn't exist in the physical engineering world in the same was as it does CS.

         1. semi-extrinsic · 1790704355 · focus · HN ↗

            Mechanical integrity in industrial processes is often divided into two categories: static equipment (tanks, pipes, heat exchangers...) and rotating equipment.

            These two have very distinct failure modes. The failure mechanisms for solid state electronics are much more similar to those for static equipment (corrosion, thermal fatigue, creep, ...)

         2. nextaccountic · 1790783204 · focus · HN ↗

            The chips themselves aren't surprising, but there are other electronic components that may fail earlier like capacitors

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