Burning-in a product isn’t a particularly new idea, and it is actually very common – whether we’re talking about high-performance cars or about PC products. However, there are only few memory makers that actually burn-in their DIMMs before shipping them to the customers. As a result, the early failure rate is at approximately 1.5% of all shipped products according to statements from GeIL. The firm also told us that their memory is at a failure rate of 0.5% within the first three months after purchase.
By implementing such a burn-in process, GeIL went on, the firm expects to lower this value to as little as 0.1% failures and RMA within the first three months after purchase. While this sounds like a lot, we know that large OEMs request even tighter quality control for memory. Anything below 0.05% should be pretty close to reality, as this equals to 0.5 DIMMs out of 1,000.
GeIL doesn’t expect cost to increase, because it wants to introduce a special memory testing chamber soon, where the firm can burn-in up to 1,000 DIMMs at the same time. As dozens or even hundreds of burn-in test systems together with the operational personnel will likely be obsolete then, GeIL expects to rather lower than increase the cost by this approach. The firm mentioned that – apart from server-class manufacturers – Kingston would be the only competitor to put all of its memory through such a burn-in process. GeIL wants to start this for SO-DIMM products first.
