"We shouldn't have to do that." I don't know about that. I know most managers in embedded software go cheap on engineers and software assurance on purpose to g

"We shouldn't have to do that." I don't know about that. I know most managers in embedded software go cheap on engineers and software assurance on purpose to get bonuses and such. The hardware side makes me think you haven't studied deep, sub-micron hardware much. I started looking into it a few years ago or so, just reading the slides on lots of stuff even though not understanding much of it. They helpfully put a lot in lay terms, though, with lots of comparisons. To say the stuff gets harder every time you shrink to a smaller node is an understatement, esp for solid state. If anything, the modern flash should probably be considered broken right as they ship out of the factory. If not, the process nodes after 90nm or so just keep having more and more ways for individual components to screw up or change behavior across same wafer. Some happen instantly by design. Some happen later with aging. The memory technologies are closer to that analog level of things than most with harder verification. The high-density flash on newer nodes uses less-reliable tech than most just to operate at that low cost. So, they add all kinds of firmware and hardware tricks to try to make it work for a period of time like it's a whole, functional unit of storage despite pieces of it misbehaving all throughout. It's a nice, man-made miracle these techs even work at all. Those that last longer like you mentioned still exist. I'll add a comment with links to one type so you can compare price/storage/performance to these broken-by-design SSD's you use. I'll throw in another two that mention shrinking challenges so you can see what they face every time they have to upgrade or just deploy new designs in mixed-signal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18528023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18528023 https://www.electronicdesign.com/digital-ics/understanding-28-nm-soc-design-arm-based-cores https://www.electronicdesign.com/digital-ics/understanding-2... https://anysilicon.com/ic-design-impact-in-moving-from-28nm-to-16nm/ https://anysilicon.com/ic-design-impact-in-moving-from-28nm-...