Lando wrote:
No. A CPU either works or doesn't work, there isn't a degradation in performance over time like with mechanical items.
A little bit more detail: there is wear internally in a microprocessor and one of the mechanisms is called electromigration, another is the degradation of the gate oxide that should act as an insulator but can break down (google is your friend !).
99% of the CPUs is externally clocked and you won't notice the wear out until the signals in the transistor can't reach the destination within the clock cycle. If that happens the CPU will abruptly fail or become unreliable. What can happen is that the power consumption goes up over time due to increased leakage currents in the transistors but most of the time this phenomenon degrades quite abrupt when it starts to be noticable.
greets,
Staf.
PS: I work
here so I'm a little bit familiar with this material.
