eli5: If modern computers and smartphones etc have no moving parts, then what causes their performance to steadily deteriorate as they age?
In: Technology
Assuming you keep the software the same, there are quite a few things that could be happening. Lets take for example a pc:
* Cooling paste between cpu and cooler (or gpu and its cooler) could dry up, causing bad conduction of heat, the cpu overheating and throttling.
* Fin grids/filters could get clogged with dust,
* Heat cycles can break electrical connections over time (although this isn’t really steady deterioration)
* Communication with other devices becomes more demanding (higher resolution screen for example)
Important smartphone aspect: the battery is degrading with time and stops being able to sustain not only the peak capacity but the current as well. So the CPU can also lower its frequency to match the lower current. And that directly affects the susceptible performance
The cooling systems can degrade over time, like the thermopaste (especially in phones, that are not designed to be user servicable and last long). Not the main aspect but one of.
It’s primarily a software problem, or at least this is what you can most easily encounter first hand.
With game consoles for example, this is not a factor. There you’ll get the cooling clog up, thermal paste getting dry, capacitors failing, various connectors becoming brittle (if they’re plastic), as well as the heat cycling and the voltage degrading the chips very slowly over time. But these are on the order of decades. If you stored your PS1/PS2 in reasonable conditions, you can expect to be able to just plug it in, and the games will run on it just as fine as they did day 1 still.
For the software problem, the issues is that over time devices keep getting more and more capable, so software is coded in accordance with the expectation that people keep upgrading to those more capable pieces of hardware too.
There are also some edge cases, e.g. with iPhones and their batteries, but that’s not that widespread.
Processors are made up of electrical components called transistors. While they are not “moving parts,” they do experience wear. There are several ways that transistors wear down over time as they are used just like a moving part would. Metal components will actually “drift” over time from being hit by electrons.
Lots in here about software but not much about the degradation of electronic components.
Just because they don’t move, doesn’t mean they don’t wear down
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