Originally Posted by
Speed of Sound
How long do you believe that new aircraft systems can continue to be run on x286-based 16 bit processing?
Modern deterministic processors for safety critical applications do exist (with a performance penalty vs mainstream processors, obviously), what you are really asking is how long can Boeing keep building "new-but-not-really-new" 737s...
The only real answer to that is "as long as people keep buying them", or just maybe "as long as they are allowed to".