[time-nuts] Reliability of atomic clocks
Mark Sims
holrum at hotmail.com
Sun Mar 27 23:20:14 EDT 2016
> Mil-spec parts would be somewhat more reliable than commercial parts.
Actually, that is seldom true. The main difference between mil-spec parts and commercial parts tends to be in the post-packaging device testing (e.g.. extended temperature / voltage range). They usually have the same guts inside the package. I friend of mine was a test engineer at a major semiconductor manufacturer and he said their commercial parts were actually more reliable than the mil-spec ones. The commercial parts were built in vastly greater quantities and their production flow / experience enabled them to continually fine tune the process and testing. The production / test regimen of mil-spec parts tended to be locked-down by inflexible specs and procedures. Changing anything required re-qualification of the entire process.
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