Ambient Technology — Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Abstract

There were 152 million PCs shipped in 2003 with 170 million expected by the end of 2004. The total number of PCs delivered worldwide over the last 10 years or so is now over one billion — but the processors in these PCs account for just 1–2% of all processors sold annually, the vast majority of the other 98% being embedded in equipment such as mobile phones, TVs, washing machines, game consoles, and cars. On the basis of these figures, an installed embedded processor base of something like 50+ billion is not an unreasonable estimate, and the average person in the UK can expect to come into contact with 100+ embedded processors a day without realising or thinking about it. This is especially true if you are driving a modern car, such as the latest Mercedes C-Class, which has 153 processors controlling things like fuel supply, braking efficiency, and navigational and safety features.