The millennium bug in embedded systems

Embedded systems are at the heart of most electronic devices and machines. Embedded systems are added to other products to make those products “smarter”, easier to use, or to add unique features. These systems are generally encoded with permanent instructions that cannot be easily changed, if at all. Problems can arise in embedded systems dealing with the representation of dates before, during, and after the year 2000. As a result, equipment or products that include embedded systems may malfunction, cause data to be corrupted, or stop working entirely. This paper defines a process that an organization would be able to utilize to find embedded systems, verify if they are Year 2000 compliant, and remediate if necessary