American Petroleum Institute on embedded systems

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Ed Yardeni quoted Ron Quiggins, director, Year 2000 Program, Shell Services and chairman of the API Year 2000 Task Force, as follows: "Significantly, the API study found that embedded chips do not pose a significant problem for the industries.... We're not finding the embedded chip failures that we thought we had." I've seen from multiple sources that at least two refineries in Venezuela must be shut down because of the impossibility of achieving compliance. I thought embedded systems must be the problem. What gives here? Is this a deja vu of the statements about embedded systems made by the electric utilities?

-- Bill Byars (billbyars@softwaresmith.com), March 07, 1999

Answers

Bill ... This IS a critical peice in the puzzle and will have lasting effects on transportation , power plants , etc. IF our DoD has trouble with planes, rockets, smart bombs. etc. we are in deep do do when Sadam is sure it's true. Kiss Kuait AND Saudia Arabia good bye... FORGET OPEC !!; Sadam will dictate the terms !!! Eagle ...circling; watching . GOT RAT TRAPS ??

-- Harold Walker (e999eagle@freewwweb.com), March 07, 1999.

BIll - we don't know - and are fiding it extermely difficult to find out real embedded chip results. The problem is not necessaily "embedded chips" per se, but rather "whole process failures" as the programs running complex expensive events fail - the point source of failure is not always the chip itself, but the program and hardware and controllers failing to do their close tolerance jobs - some fail as-is, some open, some shut, some don't start at all. But the plant manufactoring process, overall, still fails.

Actual embedded chip failures were thought to be 3%, the real number appears to be much lower (0.5-0.1%), but the affect of the process failure is hovering near 50% - that is unless repaired, only 50% can operate normally - (as they do now) - most need some form of repair or upgrade or monitoring manually during the transistion.

For example, no company that has finished remediation - and publicized it - has to my knowledge finshed the job for less money and in less time than budgetted. (Many are forcasting completion (of critical systems only) at a lower budget, but these compoanies are not done yet-and have not finsihed testing.)

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), March 07, 1999.


Does anyone have any sort of detailed information about those Venezuelan refineries? Two out of 5 closing down would appear to represent a noticeable fraction of US imports, yet I've seen no official concern about this at all. I'm completely ignorant as to what gives with these plants.

I assume Quiggins here is referring to whole system failures, or at least replaceable subsystems. The implication is that he's distinguishing between business systems and production systems, and saying the production side isn't so bad. But there isn't much to go on here.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 07, 1999.


Flint--don't know if this will help, but head on over to Jim Lord's archives at the Westergaard site. He attended a meeting of the World Future Society in December, at which one of the speakers was an aide to Rep. Stephen Horn. As I recall--he was the one who spoke about the refineries in Venezuela. Also talked about rationing in late 99. Scary.

Hope this helps.

-- FM (vidprof@aol.com), March 07, 1999.


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