IAF0530 / IAF9530 - Dependability and fault tolerance

Welcome to the cource IAF0530 / IAF9530 - Dependability and Fault Tolerance homepage.

Here you will find all the information about the course, including reading materials, lecture notes, etc. Till then you can visit the 2013's version of the same course.

Lectures will be held on Fridays, 10:00-11:30. Location: ICT-507AB (Akadeemia tee 15a).

Final discussions on June 6 and June 11. For all students. Please register here

Important dates (preliminary):

• March 1: Case study topic selection, incl. preliminary list of literature (by e-mail).
• April 4:
  • Draft of the report (by e-mail)
    • Abstract, outline, main references, ca. 1 page
  • Introductory presentation (max. 5 min, max 2-3 slides).
• May 9 and May 16 Student presentations.
• May 26 Deadline for final written reports.

Case Studies

• Students who have fullfilled the prerequisites and can register for presentation: List (pdf)
• Please register here for the presentation.
  
  
• Case Studies (read this PDF!). For MSc students: 20 min presentation + 6 pages of text. For PhD students: 30 min presentation + 10 pages of text. The presentations should be made in English but the report can be written either in Estonian or in English.
• Template: DOC/PDF.
• Some examples of possible topics.
• More examples.
• The Risks Digest Also an excellent source of topics.
• More references (from UMass).
• More references (from CMU).

Text-books:

• Reliability engineering: theory and practice, Alessandro Birolini, Springer, 2004, 2007, 2010
• Safety-critical Computer Systems, Neil Storey, Addison Wesley, 1996.
• Fault-Tolerant Systems, Israel Koren and C. Mani Krishna, Morgan-Kaufman Publishers, 2007

Lecture notes

• Lecture 1 (pdf) - Introduction, historical perspective
  
  Additional reading:
  • George Candea, "The Basics of Dependability"
  • William R. Dunn, "Designing Safety-Critical Computer Systems," IEEE Computer, Volume 36, Issue 11, Nov. 2003. Page(s):40 - 46.
  • Robert N. Charette, Why Software Fails, IEEE Spectrum
  • Bianca Schroeder and Garth A. Gibson, Carnegie Mellon University, Disk Failures in the Real World: What Does an MTTF of 1,000,000 Hours Mean to You?, 5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, 2007.
  • ARTEMIS Strategic Research Agenda. Browse it. This is to give you an understanding how the embedded world is developing.

• Lecture 2 (pdf) - Basics.
  
  Additional reading:
  • Therac-25
  • Therac-25 investigations

• Lectures 3 and 4 (pdf) - Hazards Analysis, Risk Analysis
  
  Additional reading:
  • IEC 61508 - Functional Safety.
    • To read: "FAQ - Part E: Key Concepts".
  • Methods of Determining Safety Integrity Level
  Get acquainted:
  • Incident Reporting and Analysis for Electrical, Electronic and Programmable Electronic Systems (E/E/PES) under IEC61508

• Lectures 5 and 6: (Lec 5 pdf, Lec 6 pdf) - Redundancy
  
  Additional reading:
  • E. Dubrova, "Fault-Tolerant Design: An Introduction" (PDF).
  • Lossless data compression, especially Arithmetic coding
  • Hamming Code

• Lecture 7: (pdf) - Enemies of dependability. Human factors. Verification, validation.
  
  Additional reading:
  • The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors
  • HiPEAC Roadmap - 2013
  • A Conversation with Bruce Lindsay Designing for failure may be the key to success. (6 pages)
  • M. Grottke, K. S.Trivedi, Fighting Bugs: Remove, Retry, Replicate, and Rejuvenate.
  • R. Mastipuram, E. C. Wee, Soft errors' impact on system reliability
  • Soft Errors in Electronic Memory - A White Paper
  • IBM experiments in soft fails in computer electronics (1978-1994)
  • ACM SIGCHI Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction - Definitions and overview

Contact:

Gert Jervan
Department of Computer Engineering
Akadeemia tee 15a, room ICT-527