Barnacle (slang)
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The word barnacle is a slang term used in
electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
to indicate a change made to a product on the
manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer ...
floor that was not part of the original product design. A barnacle is typically used to correct a defect in the product or as a way of enhancing the product with new functionality. A barnacle is normally a quick fix that is used until the product design can be redone incorporating the barnacle into the actual product so that when manufactured, the barnacle step in manufacturing is no longer required. A barnacle may also be added in the field in order to correct a design or manufacturing defect.


Origin

The term appears to have originated from the crustacean
barnacle Barnacles are arthropods of the subclass (taxonomy), subclass Cirripedia in the subphylum Crustacean, Crustacea. They are related to crabs and lobsters, with similar Nauplius (larva), nauplius larvae. Barnacles are exclusively marine invertebra ...
which is an animal that attaches itself to rocks, docks, ships, whales, and other objects where it grows. A barnacle in
electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...
is something added to the manufactured product. Typically a barnacle on a circuit board is very noticeable, much like the mollusc variety on a rock in the sea.


Use in software

While the term was originally used with electronic hardware, it has also migrated into the software industry where is it is used to describe software that is added to a system. The connotation in the software industry is that a software barnacle is code added as an expedient without regard to the original design intent. A software barnacle may also refer to
malware Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...
or
spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is any malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user by violating their privacy, endangering their device's securit ...
which has been inserted into a computing system illegally.


Examples

On
printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB), also called printed wiring board (PWB), is a Lamination, laminated sandwich structure of electrical conduction, conductive and Insulator (electricity), insulating layers, each with a pattern of traces, planes ...
s, a barnacle may be as simple as cutting a trace, soldering a wire in order to connect two points on the circuit board, or adding a component such as a
resistor A resistor is a passive two-terminal electronic component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element. In electronic circuits, resistors are used to reduce current flow, adjust signal levels, to divide voltages, bias active e ...
or
capacitor In electrical engineering, a capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy by accumulating electric charges on two closely spaced surfaces that are insulated from each other. The capacitor was originally known as the condenser, a term st ...
. A barnacle may also be a complex subassembly or
daughterboard In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus sl ...
. Barnacles in hardware assemblies allow an engineer to repair design errors, experiment with design changes or enhancements, or otherwise alter circuit behaviour. Although usually a barnacle-implemented change is incorporated into a new fabrication cycle circuit before production, occasionally there are final-assembly barnacles. In such cases it is determined to be less expensive to add a barnacle to a final, shipping product rather than re-spin the circuit to ship without these interventions left in place.


Use

The normal development cycle for electronic hardware contains two main phases. The first phase is the development and
prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototype ...
phase in which the hardware is first designed (and often simulated using a computer program such as
PSpice OrCAD Systems Corporation was a software company that made OrCAD, a proprietary software tool suite used primarily for electronic design automation (EDA). The software is used mainly by electronic design engineers and electronic technicians to ...
) and the design manufactured in low quantity as prototypes for
testing Test(s), testing, or TEST may refer to: * Test (assessment), an educational assessment intended to measure the respondents' knowledge or other abilities Arts and entertainment * ''Test'' (2013 film), an American film * ''Test'' (2014 film) ...
. The second phase is the updating of design documents based on the testing experience and the beginning of general manufacturing of the product. During the testing phase, problems are usually found as the design and simulation tools can not duplicate some types of environmental as well as electrical circumstances in which the product may be used. During the testing phases, barnacles are often used to
patch (computing) A patch is data that is intended to be used to modify an existing software resource such as a computer program, program or a computer file, file, often to fix software bug, bugs and security vulnerability, security vulnerabilities. A patch may b ...
or correct the hardware so that testing can continue in the face of defects (
failure Failure is the social concept of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and is usually viewed as the opposite of success. The criteria for failure depends on context, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. On ...
s or faults) found. The goals of adding barnacles at this phase are to reduce development costs by using the prototype hardware for as long as it can be used, to test hardware changes before the design documentation is updated, and to reduce development time by not requiring a new version of the prototype hardware to be manufactured. During general manufacturing of the product, the product may sometimes be used in circumstances which the
specification A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard. There are different types of technical or engineering specificati ...
s indicate would be acceptable however when the product is actually used in those circumstances, a problem is encountered. Engineering will typically perform a
root cause analysis In science and engineering, root cause analysis (RCA) is a method of problem solving used for identifying the root causes of faults or problems. It is widely used in IT operations, manufacturing, telecommunications, industrial process control, ...
in order to determine the root cause of the problem. In some cases, manufacturing changes may need to be made such as trace contaminants being introduced during some phase of manufacturing. In other cases, the problem has to do with the design of the product and a change has to be made in the product design. When a product design change is required, often and when possible, a barnacle is designed so that existing products can be modified with the design change using the barnacle. By using a barnacle, the idea is that existing products do not need to be scrapped and replaced so in this case the use of a barnacle is an economic decision. The barnacle work may be done in the field using portable tools and components or it may require a
product recall "Product Recall" is the twenty-first episode of the third season of the American comedy television series '' The Office'' and the show's forty-ninth episode overall. The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton b ...
with the barnacle work being done on the manufacturing floor.


See also

*
Electronic design automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools wo ...
*
Electronic engineering Electronic engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering that emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current flo ...
*
Engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...
*
Product design Product design is the process of creating new Product (business), products for businesses to sell to their customers. It involves the generation and development of ideas through a systematic process that leads to the creation of innovative products ...
*
Product lifecycle management In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its inception through the engineering, design, and manufacture, as well as the service and disposal of manufactured products. ...
*
Product management Product management is the business process of planning, developing, launching, and managing a product or service. It includes the entire lifecycle of a product, from ideation to development to go to market. Product managers are responsible for ...
*
Technical standard A technical standard is an established Social norm, norm or requirement for a repeatable technical task which is applied to a common and repeated use of rules, conditions, guidelines or characteristics for products or related processes and producti ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barnacle (Slang) Electrical components Metaphors referring to animals