The Year 2038 Problem

[snopes]

Starting at GMT 03:14:07, Tuesday, January 19, 2038, It is expected to see lots of systems around the world breaking magnificently: satellites falling out of orbit, massive power outages(like the 2003 North American blackout), hospital life support system failures, phone system interruptions,banking errors, etc. One second after this critical second, many of these systems will have wildly inaccurate date settings, producing all kinds of predictable consequences. In short, many of the dire predictions for the year 2000 are much more likely to actually occur in the year 2038! Consider the year 2000 just a dry run. In case you think we can sit on this issue for another 30 years before addressing it, consider that reports of temporal echoes of the 2038 problem are already starting to appear in future date calculations for mortgages and vital statistics.

http://www.go4expert.com/forums/showthread.php?t=348

[Troberg]

The 2038 problem is a hardware problem, specific to PC hardware. The average life span of a PC is less than five years. I think they can fix the problem in almost six generations.

[AnglRdr]

That's when all my spam is dated (not the eating kind, the email kind).

Maybe the world's financial systems will fail because of all the free cash gifts I'm supposed to collect on. And also, Viagra.

[llewtrah]

Back at the end of 1999, one of the SW engineers at work warned me of the 2038 problem in some of our products. Being a diligent sort (or maybe just very geeky), before he left for another job he provided me with a list of what he believed to be the affected systems. His warning is still in my email folders from 1999.

[Mad Jay]

Unlike the Y2K problem, the 2038 problem can be solved by making time_t bigger. And they are going to do that in 64 bit OS anyways.

I'd be surprised if by 2038 there would be any computers left with 32 bit OS. Windows comes up with a new OS what every 2 years now? THe various versions of Linux already have 64 bit versions coming out. Almost all the popular programming languages have 64 bit compilers available. THe 2038 problem might simply require a recompilation of code (I know easier said than done, but still much simpler than actually changing code). In case of interpreted or JIT compiled languages like Java, nothing will be required because the VM is going to take care of it

Sure, if the developer has jerry-rigged the app, and use time related routines in a wierd way, then those programs are going into run into problems. However, that should be a minority of apps. Hopefully, none of them are critical

[CSGirl]

Will we still be using 32 bit processors in 30 years? I doubt it.

In the article in the OP, some people tested different OSs by changing the date. Interesting.

ETA: Ouchie, spanked by Mad Jay,

[Eddylizard]

While some of the systems mentioned that are "doomed to fail" may be dependant on knowing what tme it is, I doubt if all of them are? Will life support machines suddenly stop dispensing oxygen because the clock says it's last century? Is the power grid that fragile that it will collapse due to this error? The only thing I can see going majorly wrong with the power grid is that people might get billed for peak rate electricity at off peak times.

[Photo Bob]

I'm not going to worry about this.

A giant asteroid is going to destroy Earth in 2029 so I don't think malfunctioning computers will be a problem.

Photo "why sweat the little stuff when the big stuff will kill you first" Bob

[iz staklenih dubina]

Originally Posted by Photo Bob

A giant asteroid is going to destroy Earth in 2029 so I don't think malfunctioning computers will be a problem.

Not if the LHC black hole gets us first!

[CenTex]

Wait a minute, I thought the Mayan Calendar predicted the end in 2012? What are we worrying abour 2038 for? we have less than four years left!

[HollowMan]

Originally Posted by Photo Bob

I'm not going to worry about this.

A giant asteroid is going to destroy Earth in 2029 so I don't think malfunctioning computers will be a problem.

Photo "why sweat the little stuff when the big stuff will kill you first" Bob

Eh, that asteroid is going to be about 17 years too late.

From what I hear the Earth is going to be turning in to a big ball of spaghetti round about Dec '12.

Or something like that.

[Photo Bob]

Mayans Shmayans. That date is just speculation.

The date of the asteroid is based on hard scientific fact.

Do you believe everything that your Read?

If so then send for my book "How to Survive the End of the World". It's only $19.95, but for the next ten minutes only you will also recieve an extra copy for your car.

Photo "who you gonna believe, a bunch of dead guys or a computer simulation?" Bob

[Mad Jay]

Originally Posted by Eddylizard

While some of the systems mentioned that are "doomed to fail" may be dependant on knowing what tme it is, I doubt if all of them are? Will life support machines suddenly stop dispensing oxygen because the clock says it's last century? Is the power grid that fragile that it will collapse due to this error? The only thing I can see going majorly wrong with the power grid is that people might get billed for peak rate electricity at off peak times.

Purely speculating:- A life support machine might use "time" to figure out at what rate the medicines should be fed to the patient

[ButterscotchCat]

Originally Posted by AnglRdr

That's when all my spam is dated (not the eating kind, the email kind).

Wow, wierd, mine too.

[Troberg]

I'd be surprised if by 2038 there would be any computers left with 32 bit OS.

and

Will we still be using 32 bit processors in 30 years?

I doubt we will even be using 64-bit processors/OS in 30 years. Look back 30 years, and you'll see 8 bit. Granted, the benefits of more bits is linear to the number of bits, but since we are starting to run into the limits of clock speed, something else is needed. More cores/CPUs is one thing to do, but that will only increase the speed for certain tasks, many tasks are very awkward to spread on several cores/CPUs. Interestingly, those tasks which are not suited for multiple cores are typically the ones that benefits the most from a wider bus (such as various data shuffling tasks), so there is an incentive for wider buses.

I wouldn't at all be surprised if we see extremely wide buses in 30 years, perhaps as wide as 1024 bits. The main problem to solve is PCB design, but that is being addressed by using multiple extremely fast serial buses, something we will soon see in production.

Purely speculating:- A life support machine might use "time" to figure out at what rate the medicines should be fed to the patient

That depends on what you mean with time. Ticks, yes. Calendar, no. In other words, it keeps track of how long it is since the last time it delivered medicine. It does not, however, really care about the date. Time since last delivery is just a second count, and will continue to work even if the date rolls over.

This is the same mistake a lot of people made during the Y2k debacle, and was a reason for much of the hysteria surrounding it. They assumed that everything that had some kind of timer would fail, but it's only the bits which rely on a calendar, and relies on it being correct (this is an important distinction, a lot of stuff will work nicely even if it happens to log stuff on the wrong date) that will fail.

Basically, it's not the clock that will fail, it will continue to happily tick away seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years without problem. It's the calendar that will fail, the bit that locks translates the time into our way of describing it. As long as you don't need to translate time into a date, you'll be fine.

A giant asteroid is going to destroy Earth in 2029 so I don't think malfunctioning computers will be a problem.

Fortunately, there is a solution to the asteroid problem: http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus37.html

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by snopes

Consider the year 2000 just a dry run.

Where nothing happened.

[GoMeZu]

I think what bothers me most about that article is that it makes the blackout of 2003 sound like it was a computer systems failure when really it was all about the trees. Sure there were some computer issues that occur after the blackout started, but the root cause was trees. The article seems to imply that some kind of systems failure or coding problem was the source, but it wasn't.

[ButterscotchCat]

Originally Posted by GoMeZu

I think what bothers me most about that article is that it makes the blackout of 2003 sound like it was a computer systems failure when really it was all about the trees. Sure there were some computer issues that occur after the blackout started, but the root cause was trees. The article seems to imply that some kind of systems failure or coding problem was the source, but it wasn't.

Does anyone else think that the "root cause of the blackout was trees" is kind of funny? Ha ha roots, trees, ha ha

[Hero_Mike]

Originally Posted by GoMeZu

I think what bothers me most about that article is that it makes the blackout of 2003 sound like it was a computer systems failure when really it was all about the trees. Sure there were some computer issues that occur after the blackout started, but the root cause was trees. The article seems to imply that some kind of systems failure or coding problem was the source, but it wasn't.

The OP didn't say that the blackout of 2003 was caused by a Y2K or computer problem - but that the Y2038 problem can cause things *like* the blackout of 2003.

The blackout of 2003 was caused by equipment failure - real hardware failing, and not a simple computer coding bug. But it had wide-reaching and serious implications for millions of people. The disaster is given as comparison for magnitude and impact, not cause.

[Salamander]

Originally Posted by Troberg

The 2038 problem is a hardware problem, specific to PC hardware. The average life span of a PC is less than five years. I think they can fix the problem in almost six generations.

Originally Posted by Mad Jay

Unlike the Y2K problem, the 2038 problem can be solved by making time_t bigger. And they are going to do that in 64 bit OS anyways.

I'd be surprised if by 2038 there would be any computers left with 32 bit OS. Windows comes up with a new OS what every 2 years now? THe various versions of Linux already have 64 bit versions coming out. Almost all the popular programming languages have 64 bit compilers available. THe 2038 problem might simply require a recompilation of code (I know easier said than done, but still much simpler than actually changing code). In case of interpreted or JIT compiled languages like Java, nothing will be required because the VM is going to take care of it

Sure, if the developer has jerry-rigged the app, and use time related routines in a wierd way, then those programs are going into run into problems. However, that should be a minority of apps. Hopefully, none of them are critical

Originally Posted by CSGirl

Will we still be using 32 bit processors in 30 years? I doubt it.

In the article in the OP, some people tested different OSs by changing the date. Interesting.

ETA: Ouchie, spanked by Mad Jay,

I don't think there is any question that new computers being shipped as of 2038 will

a) Barely resemble the PCs we have now
b) Be safeguarded against the 2038 'problem'.

The question is more "What legacy systems will still be in place and will we know to fix them, or be able to fix them?". At any rate, I look forward to coming out of retirement in 2037 in order to charge obscene amounts of money for my expert knowledge of the then-archaic Windows XP OS.