'...each embedded system or piece of equipment MUST be treated as a unique system'
From: "david c hall/tatd/73158" <ftrdch@naic.wpafb.af.mil>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:49:09 -0500
To: year2000-discuss@year2000.com
Subject: Re: Embedded Systems (was Compliance: Vehicles and Y2K - TEST THEM)
Every embedded sytems test that I am aware of has verified the assumption that each embedded system or piece of equipment MUST be treated as a unique system. Even the same models of equipment react to Year 2000 dates differently. Think
about the hardware involved. The basic chips, RTCs, motherboards, BIOS, etc. HAVE HAD NO DATE STANDARD as far as 2000 dates are concerned. So how can
anyone assume that no matter what pieces of hardware you use, they will all react the same at the macro level? Each "black box" is made up of numerous vendor specific "sub black boxes" that are made up of (and so on). Not one of the vendors up this build chain has EVER known exactly what the subvendor put
into their "black box". So once you get to the actual installed system level, there may be a dozen subvendors, all with different chips in each of their "sub black boxes". And each of these chips was bought from the cheapest manufacturer on some day and thrown into a pile. When needed, a chip (since each one was built to the same specs) was picked up and used. Whose chip it
was, no one cared. Well, now we need to care. And because there was no manufacturing standard for 2000 dates, each chip, even ones from the same manufacturer, may (WILL) react to year 2000 dates differently. THEREFORE, each embedded system, or piece of equipment, or PC, or anything using chips, MUST be
tested as if it was unique. There can be NO generic tests used for any reason on equipment with chips. Sorry about that. This is reality as proven by testing and documentation searches. This is one of the reasons why I persist in noting that embedded ssytems will cost the world at least four times as much to remediate (or fix failures) as mainframe systems.
$600 Billion X 4 = $2400 billion ? Sounds like a dumb number? Well try and calculate how much the world has spent over the past fifty years putting chips into everything. This is probably a very small percentage. But it is a tremendous sum to pay over the next few years. Especially since most of it will go for nonexistant manpower.
Dave Hall Opinions are my own and not those of my employer
dhall@enteract.com
SIM Year 2000 Working Group Infrastructure Topic Manager
On Feb 25, 9:07am, Y2K Maillist (Via: Amy) wrote:
> Subject: Re: Compliance: Vehicles and Y2K - TEST THEM
> From: "Richard W. Poole" <rwpoole@email.msn.com>
> To: <year2000-discuss@year2000.com>
> Subject: Re: Compliance: Vehicles and Y2K - TEST THEM
> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 20:34:52 -0500
>
> Your implication is that if I was evaluating three factories with 8 copies
> of the particular model of a piece of equipment, that each of the 8 would
> have to be taken off line and tested individually. That is extremely
> expensive. Does anyone have a specific example of either manufacturing or
> warehousing systems where this has occurred? It took quite a few requests
> to get specifics of same model PCs with same BIOS that acted differently. I
> hope that someone can respond faster on this question. |
