Naive Question About Embedded Chips?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Electric Utilities and Y2K : One Thread

First off, please excuse my lack of technical expertise in this arena. The majority of the posts that I have witnessed are of a superior knowledge base concerning Y2K/Electrical problems, so this may seem rather rudimentary. I have read as much info as I have been able to find on embedded systems and keep finding discrepancies. Anyone have any answers to the following thoughts? TIA 1) From the info I have seen, many of these embedded chips/systems, cannot be accurately tested until the actual rollover(?) If so, how do the engineers "claim" that they have found "few" Y2K problems?

2)I remember reading somewhere about an interview with the head of Intel. His statement was that (I believe) by y2k, there will be about 50 Billion chips (embedded?) in use. Out of these, a certain small percentage will have a date function. Now here is the interesting part - According to him, many chips are built with a "standard" date function, i.e. - hidden. This is done because it would be far too costly to produce "custom" chips for every application (approximate cost for design and mfg. - $100,000). So, the industry makes a lot of "wide-use" chips (I'm paraphrasing here) that fit multiple apps., with many already having a date function embedded in them. Even though, say an electric or nuclear facility (I definately had to get those categories in Rick, to be "compliant" for this forum ;) ) doesn't use the date function and may not even know it exists in the chip/system, the function is still active and may not work properly at the rollover. 2) If the above statement is true, a. are the engineers aware of this situation, b. are certain contingencies allowed for such situations, and c. if not, what happens to their compliance figures in reality and at the rollover? Again, my apologies if I am entering questions that may seem obvious to the initiated. Us "non-techies" are very worried too!. Thanks Jeff Sullivan

-- Anonymous, March 13, 1999

Answers

Jeff,

Just wanted to let you know that I too had and still have the same questions that you have.

I hope you get some responses.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 1999


This is a fundamental question that could be as important as questions about data on percentages of compliant systems, since there may be no way to test many systems. Wish I knew the answer.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 1999

Carol & Bill - and of course, anyone else interested. Here is the URL to a paper on embedded systems and chips that seems to explain it succinctly (sp?). If I'm reading this right, my worst fears are confirmed! Anyone else have a different take on this? Jeff

-- Anonymous, March 31, 1999

Oops! Here is the URL, sorry! http://www.tmn.com/~frautsch/index.html

-- Anonymous, March 31, 1999

Moderation questions? read the FAQ