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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: It is sad it has to be that way... posted by *Michael Z* on August 9, 2006 at 09:57:51:
Specification for certification of "railborne" equipment in modern current bullet trains (I mean with average cruise speed in the 360km/h, 200mi/h) require assessment of reliability of all the components used in any critical equipment rack.
This assessment comprises values like "Average Mean Time Between Failures Calculated From Statistical Study of Failures".
To fill this line (for each component...) you need several years of on-field testing in the railway environment, done in non-critical equipment.
Then only you can get real numbers, and make a correct reliability assessment.
Only then you can think to certification.On the dark side, it precludes use of "cutting edge" components.
For example, the most modern board computer in french TGV comprises two racks set each on one side of the engine -for redundancy-, each comprising four single-boards computers -one spare and 3 running the same algorithms at the same time, with actions from a majority vote-.
Those computers are based onto PowerPC G3 at 200MHz.
Hardly cutting edge (was used in '96 Macs).
On the bright side, not a single hard failure ever occurred (with the previous computers, based on MC68000) in more than 20 years and 50,000 cumulated km/day, that is 360 millions kms...
Less than 10 soft failures (one microprocessor gone mad, calculates bad, which is seen by other members of the trio, who trigger a reset on the culprit.)
That said, audio equipment is scarcely "cutting edge", or it could often be very rusted pre-WWII edges.A problem in building high reliability equipment is that it is hardly seen.
Only if you have hundreds of units would you see a drastic decrease in failure rate.
So, for a profit-highlighting company, hi-rel is somewhat irrelevant for customer equipment. Furthermore, you cannot really build you marketing politics on reliability, because it implies that equipment could fail, which is not marketically PC.But be sure that much more reliable audio equipment can be built.
Take also as granted that those who build such equipment (they exist) have very good engineers, because it's not so easy...
Those companies are engineering-driven, not marketing-driven.
So expect them to be slightly more expensive than mainstream.
Slightly only.
Engineering-driven companies won't likely have prices skyrocket.
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Follow Ups
- But for railway-use certified equipment (among others) ... - Jacques 08/10/0603:44:30 08/10/06 (0)
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