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IC Failures Linked to Resin Series?
MEW writes "According to this article, 'the semiconductor industry began using red phosphorus as a flame retardant instead of the Br-based compound it had used for years,' due to environmental concerns. By July 2002, 1000 tons of the stuff was used for about a billion chips, when they stopped due to high component failures. In particular Sumitomo Bakelite caused rampant failures in Fujitsu disk drives. There's still a lot of Sumitomo Bakelite out there, and we may see the worst of it soon, as components start to fail prematurely. This was posted by Spaceman on Macintouch who says that the bad material accounts for 'half the world's supply of 'IC Plastics'' and can result in 'sudden or premature end of life.'"
It's strange to read that, since the Digital-Analog converter on my video card apparently has died this morning when my computer turned on.
:(
On the plus side to this premature failure, Slashdot now looks extremely trippy... Those green bars keep blinking magenta!
The down side is the contrast for text is really bad...
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
"Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
...Does that mean if my chips glow red in the dark then its a bad thing?
Perhaps I need one of those heat-sink thingies.
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
I have seen some pretty funny comments on this story, and some pretty interesting ones as well. Reading this story made me really wonder about some things.
;) )
If this problem is as pervasive as it seems, exactly WHAT components are effected? I mean, think about this, how many of these plastics have found their way into things like Ventilators, internal defibrillators, external defibrillators like the LifePak series that is so prevalant on ambulances and in hospitals world wide?
What about the machines that control your money in the bank (if you use such a thing as quaint as a bank
Vehicle computers? or even... ACK, my PS2 and GameCube?!?!?!?
Anyway, beyond hard disk controllers, I got the idea that there were a lot of different ICs effected here, which could explain a lot of problems, and could cause some pretty bad problems as well.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
>And if the environmentalists keep getting their way
Yeah those damn peacenik hippi socialists that control the house, senate, supreme court, white house, wto, and all of those multi-national companies that are ruining this world or ours.
I'm just waiting for the new lead-free solder which will be mandatory in the EU from 2005 on... It's already known to cause cold solder spots more likely to happen.
Conspiracy theories are by nature unassailable. However, according to the article there is a simple reason why it wasn't tested, and that is that it was an unexpected effect, for which there was no test:
Broken Window Fallacy
Read it, learn it, love it, spread it.
I have seen many comments here about environmental fanatics who won't look at the scientific facts, and in the end we get lots of wasted electronics in landfills. An Anonymous Coward especially talked about "billions of ruined components in landfills".
9 /107p643- 648sjodin/sjodin-full.html
First of all, the reason many European countries have limited or banned the use of certain flame retardants is that these chemicals are not released only in fires, but in everyday use of electronics. They show up in the blood of office workers, and especially high concentrations in people working with electronic recycling, and they also show up in nature:
http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/members/199
Note that the article ends by saying not that the industry will go back to using the old materials, but that they will try to develop other alternatives than this failed one.
Second, we don't know for sure that this "mass failure" of electronics will occur. Some of the right wingers who are screaming about the cost and are fond of quoting the junkscience site seem to be taking this mass failure as a fact, like it already happened. Who are jumping to conclusions now?
Third, even if the new material leads to product failure, why only blame environmentalists, how about Sumitomo developers?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
As does radical industrialism. Polluting the planet willy-nilly just so someone can make a buck has a huge cost but, unfortunately, that cost is not included in the price of the manufactured goods. The manufacturer has thus found a way to privatize the profits while he socializes the cost. It's one of the ways that our form of capitalism has become distorted from a sustainable form of capitalism. All costs should be included in the price of the product or it's not really capitalism.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Actually, while you're right about Wal-Mart being worse than Target, K-Mart, etc, the points you raise are effects of their policy to keep prices low, not the -cause- of why they have low prices.
... they are such a larger part of the economy that they are able to -force- manufacturers to sell at lower prices to WM that to other retailers. They have literally caused companies to move offices from across the country to Arkansas so that the companies can more efficiently "negotiate with" (read: cower in front of) WM. WM sets the hours and often has unofficial hiring authority over these Arkansan satellite offices. NO other retailer has ever had that kind of power.
... people have to stop low-price gouging and shopping at the cheapest possible place. And it is just as hard to -convince- a person of that as it is to convince them to stick to a diet.
Wal-Mart's practices are there because they need them to retain their low price leadership in an economy that has adapted to WM's first round of low price wars.
You also don't mention the biggest key to WM's forced price lowering
However, even that is not the -cause-. The cause is the willingness of most Americans to sacrifice their community retailers and specialty chains for lower prices and "all under one roof" shopping, even if as a whole the selection of products is lower. That short sighted view in the end causes the community as a whole to lose value (monetarily as well as socially), making Wal-Mart the ONLY long-term winner in that situation.
The answer is as simple as telling an overweight person to diet and exercise
BTW, yes it is true that K-Mart and Target -started- the concepts on a nationwide scale. However they never abuse their position (possibly because they never attained a position as strong as WM) like WM has.
Economics will eventually right the situation, but the damage that will have been done by that point (which won't occur until WM has completely exhausted it's growth capacity AND product development has stagnated due to lack of competition) will be horrendous to everyone's standard of living.
BTW, if you shop at "Sam's", you shop at Wal-Mart. Got a Costco or similar non-Sam's wholesaler? Go there.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.