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How has/hasn't CPU reliability changed over the decades? Are these generally as sturdy as a 486? A 286 machine was mentioned in a recent article here, will you
by jonah 11y ago
How has/hasn't CPU reliability changed over the decades? Are these generally as sturdy as a 486? A 286 machine was mentioned in a recent article here, will you be able to find a running Skylake machine in 2045? How does the process size affect this? What other factors?
- hga 11y agoA 286 machine was mentioned in a recent article here, will you be able to find a running Skylake machine in 2045? I've been thinking about this lately, and between the jihad against lead (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pest) and these machines storing the BIOS etc. in flash memory, I'm beginning to doubt it.
- cfallin 11y agoI'm nowhere near an expert in this, but I've heard that electromigration in the really thin wires can cause wearout over time. I imagine that this is probably near-negligible in the micrometer-sized interconnect layers in the 286 but a non-negligible issue in 14nm.
- userbinator 11y agoI'd say that it's decreased, because of how tiny the transistors and interconnects are getting. The CPUs still work today (obviously), but the margins are much thinner than they used to be because they don't design for more than a few years' lifespan. The 486 was produced in a 1um (1000nm) to 600nm process and runs on 5V+/-5% (4.75-5.25, a 250mV range), with an absolute maximum of 6.5V. The 14nm Skylake has a core voltage of ~1V, tolerance of a few tens of mV, and an absolute maximum of 1.52V. Electromigration will likely become a significant source of IC failures in the future.