Firmware is getting more sophisticated and expansive, so it wouldn't surprise me. Bug-rate-per-LoC seems to stay pretty stable.
I suspect this is closer to the truth, defects in firmware being more likely given more firmware. But it is also true that less experienced people are being asked to build bigger and more complex systems and there is a cognitive limit.
Yeah, in the old days this was all done in hardware and you got hardware bugs like the infamous ones in the CMD640 IDE controller. (I think Apple had their fair share of data corruption bugs in that era too, actually.)
On CMD640/RZ1000, if OS/2 2.x actually replaced DOS/Windows instead of turning into an entire fiasco, these hardware would not likely have shipped with the problems.
Well, there's some of that, but also I think the whole package of firmware and hardware just does more these days.
I wonder if there's anywhere I can read about this. (Paging Jason Scott)
Stuff is a lot cheaper than it used to be; while some of that is due to economy of scale, I wouldn't be surprised if corners are being cut. Firmware never got much respect to begin with.
There are issues other than firmware... (http://evertiq.com/design/25484)... but I haven't seen anything on the MTBF's of recent yields.
Its not getting worse, its just more pervasive. Quality tends to be lower than hardwired implementations ("because we can fix it at manufacture time!"), primarily due to the rush to first to market.