GARTNER HOUSE TESTIMONY: It don't look good.
house.gov
Excerpt
More than 3.3 billion microcontroller chips.
The significant barrier to COMPARE scale progress worldwide has been non-IT assets. The challenges posed by the year 2000 are not restricted to IS organizations or desktop systems. Most of the computers in the world are not performing desktop functions. For example, in 1995, Dataquest, a Gartner Group company, estimated that more than 3.3 billion microcontroller chips were shipped; these are computers with word lengths from four to 32 bits embedded in hardware such as cars, video recorders, elevators, microwave ovens, access control systems, navigation equipment (e.g., GPS), nuclear power
plants and weapons. Many such systems are date aware. In some cases, failure might cause serious business consequences, so the systems must be investigated as part of a year 2000 project. Many organizations in sectors such as manufacturing and utilities own nondesktop systems used for process control, monitoring and factory automation. |
