All modern integrated circuits have a limited life expectancy to them because of the natural decay of the photolithographically created microstructures and doping of the silicon crystal. The main driver behind this progressive loss of functionality is electromigration. For larger feature sizes, which translates to older and less capable technology, electromigration is a negligible effect, but it is particularly bad for high performance modern CPUs, especially those smaller than the 200 nm node. While Voyager’s ICs are primitive, they are also old and it is very expected that they fail after several decades.
All modern integrated circuits have a limited life expectancy to them because of the natural decay of the photolithographically created microstructures and doping of the silicon crystal. The main driver behind this progressive loss of functionality is electromigration. For larger feature sizes, which translates to older and less capable technology, electromigration is a negligible effect, but it is particularly bad for high performance modern CPUs, especially those smaller than the 200 nm node. While Voyager’s ICs are primitive, they are also old and it is very expected that they fail after several decades.