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Technology Stocks : Year 2000 (Y2K) Embedded Systems & Infrastructure Problem -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sawtooth who wrote (588)	11/30/1998 9:00:00 PM
From: tech101	Respond to of 618

Subject 23908 According to Nov. 23, 1998 PCWeek, AN EMBEDDED DILEMMA zdnet.com in the entire history of the semiconductor industry, about 70 billion chips have been made, and only a portion -- figures of 25 billion to 40 billion bandied around by some analysts -- of these are microprocessors and microcontrollers that can constitute an embedded system. The paradox of embedded systems is that most of them are dumb and therefore pose minimal Y2K risks, but, by virtue of their simplicity, these systems are almost always hard-coded and therefore cannot be re-mediated if trouble occurs. The less-numerous, more-complex true embedded systems contain some sort of software. In theory, this means these systems can be upgraded if necessary; however, it also means that they are more likely to use a date function and are therefore more susceptible to Y2K problems. PC Week Labs arrives at a failure rate in embedded systems that hovers around 5 percent. However, this seemingly paltry percentage can represent considerable financial expenditure for many companies because of the intricacies involved with testing and fixing embedded systems. PROBLEM DATES One of the problems with embedded systems is that they do not use dates in a traditional manner. In embedded systems, dates aren't as important as time intervals or cycles. Interval timing does not use an absolute date, but only a date relative to another date. In this manner, it logs dates as the period of time after a specific event. For example, a date of zero is written when maintenance is done on a system. The system then counts days until another maintenance cycle is due. Things get sticky when this interval timing uses specific dates. In the previous example, an elevator could be the device performing the maintenance logging. Elevators provide a perfect example because by law they cannot operate outside of their maintenance cycle. If an elevator must be inspected every six months, when the date rolls over for 2000, the elevator will "think" the inspection is 99 years and six months overdue and stop working. Fortunately, the elevator will probably not plummet to the ground--most are programmed to return to the ground floor and cease functioning until maintenance is performed. NO QUICK FIXES Fixing embedded systems provides a litany of unique problems. An embedded system may use a special type of ultraviolet ROM to store its firmware or controller software. These UV ROMs might not even be available anymore because they've been discontinued, making any attempt at remediation impossible.