13 Jun
2006
13 Jun
'06
6:45 p.m.
jim stephens wrote:
Don Y wrote:
IIRC, early EPROM technology was ballparked at ~10 year lifetime.
I always wondered how much of that was influenced by light leakage
into windowed devices and how OTP devices would compare...
Has anyone any "real" data on EM
effects? Or is this effectively
urban legendry?
Eproms are chemical based in some cases. I had some of them damaged
near time when they were new. If talking about the semiconductors, I worked in a lab
in the 70's that was
doing, and had done a large amount of research on radiation hardening.
<grin> Gee, I wonder *why* they were doing that? ;-)
It is effectivly a speeded up version of what happens
to chips over time
from natural sources in packaging and manufacturing, as well as cosmic
rays. We had no way to determine a time variant, but the radiation had
effects on the junctions, and they did change characteristics. I would
assume that with the "background" radiation levels this would occur, though
over what time span, I don't know.
It isn't urban legend. but the parts, and the environment they are in
may have an effect on the time it takes for something to drift far
enough to make a part stop working.