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From: amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Synchronizer failure; MTBF
Message-ID: <2509@taux01.UUCP>
Date: 5 Sep 89 05:50:00 GMT
References: <26811@obiwan.mips.COM>
Organization: National Semiconductor (IC) Ltd, Israel Home of the 32532
Lines: 22
Hdate: 5 Elul 5749

In article <26811@obiwan.mips.COM> mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) writes:
	[An excellent analysis of MTBF - if you have not read it yet,
	go back and read it now]
|Philosophizing aside, the distribution of random failures is given by
|
|      Probability( a failure will
|                   occur between          =   1.0 - exp(-T/m)
|                   time 0 and time T )
|
|where the parameter m>0 is called the Mean Time Between Failures.
|Note that the distribution is highly skewed, towards early failures
|(failures before T=m).

Maybe we should use the term Half Life, used by physicists to compute
radioactive decay; it should be computed as
	HL = ln(2)*MTBF

-- 
	Amos Shapir		amos@taux01.nsc.com or amos@nsc.nsc.com
National Semiconductor (Israel) P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel
Tel. +972 52 522261  TWX: 33691, fax: +972-52-558322
34 48 E / 32 10 N			(My other cpu is a NS32532)