Home Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

Operating life of solid-state electronics.

Any objects made by humans have finite operating lives. Vacuum tubes wear out when the filaments fail if they do not die from manufacturing defects first. The early transistors were more likely to fail from defects than from any wear-out mechanism. Contemporary integrated circuits contain several known wear-out mechanisms, and the expectation is that the user will replace the device long before the integrated circuits in it fail.

Laser and light-emitting diodes are made of slightly more exotic materials than conventional silicon integrated circuits, but are not nearly as miniaturized. Their internal stresses are much lower than those on the transistors in a typical CPU chip. However, the materials are not as well controlled, so it is still a gamble as to whether the diode in your machine contains a defect that will limit its life. This is why you cannot get a definite answer to your question.


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Amplified Parts  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • Operating life of solid-state electronics. - Al Sekela 14:47:50 12/02/06 (0)


You can not post to an archived thread.