Pipelines are very sensitive to the weakness of their components.
- Pipelines are very sensitive to the weakness of their components.[sl]
- The chance the entire pipeline works requires multiplying the likelihood of any of the subcomponents failing[sm].
- All it takes is one component in a pipeline not working to invalidate the whole pipeline.
- With a high failure rate of components or a long pipeline, that error rate of the pipeline goes up very quickly.
- Components that are larger and take on more tasks are more likely to have a high failure rate: to have inputs they can't produce good outputs for.
- The more targeted the inner components; the more hardened and successful in the past they've been, the more likely the entire pipeline works[sn].