1. A factory test designed to catch
systems with marginal components before they get out the door;
the theory is that burn-in will protect customers by outwaiting the
steepest part of the bathtub curve (see infant mortali
using a computer is so intensely involved in his project that he
forgets basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, etc. Warning:
Excessive burn-in can lead to burn-out. See hack mode,
larval stage.
Historical note: the origin of "burn-in" (sense 1) is apparently
the practice of setting a new-model airplane's brakes on fire, then
extinguishing the fire, in order to make them hold better. This was
done on the first version of the U.S. spy-plane, the U-2.
infant mortality n.
It is common lore among hackers (and in
the electronics industry at large his term is possibly techspeak
by now) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off
exponentially with a machine's time since first use (that is, until
the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O
devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated
for the machine to start going senile)....
infant mortality: n. It is common lore among hackers (and in the
electronics industry at large his term is possibly techspeak by
now) that the chances of sudden hardware failure drop off
exponentially with a machine's time since first use (that is, until
the relatively distant time at which enough mechanical wear in I/O
devices and thermal-cycling stress in components has accumulated
for the machine to start going senile)....
