Burn-in runs every unit, often at raised temperature and voltage such as 125 C with the supply boosted above nominal, for hours to days, to flush out infant mortality failures. It pays off only where the hazard rate is falling, a Weibull beta below 1, and it uses up some of the useful life of the good units. Its cost in time, sockets and ovens drives a constant push to shorten or eliminate it once early failure rates drop.
Burn-in fallout has been under 50 ppm for six months. Let's propose cutting it from 48 to 12 hours on this product.
Also heard as
- burn in
- BI
Related terms
Infant mortality
Early-life failures caused by manufacturing flaws, giving a failure rate that starts high and then falls.
Bathtub curve
Plot of failure rate over a product's life: falling early failures, a flat random period, then rising wear-out.
Acceleration factor
Ratio of life under normal use conditions to life under a harsher test condition, used to turn test hours into field time.
Shape parameter
Weibull beta: the slope of a Weibull plot, which shows whether failures are early-life, random or wear-out.