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Concept
Barnacle (slang)
Summary
The word barnacle is a slang term used in electrical engineering to indicate a change made to a product on the manufacturing 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.
The term appears to have originated from the crustacean barnacle which is an animal that attaches itself to rocks, docks, ships, whales, and other objects where it grows. A barnacle in electronics 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.
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 or spyware which has been inserted into a computing system illegally.
On printed circuit boards, 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 or capacitor. A barnacle may also be a complex subassembly or daughterboard.
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.
Official source
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