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 2014's version of the same course.

Lectures will be held on Fridays, 16:00-17:30. Location: ICT-315 (Akadeemia tee 15a).

In all e-mails please mention either IAF0530 or IAF9530 in the Subject. Otherwize your e-mail might remain un-noticed.

Important dates (preliminary):

• No presentations on May 29!! Please refer to the e-mail for details.
• No lectures on February 20, March 13, May 15 (Tentatively)
• March 9: Case study topic selection (title) + preliminary list of literature. Send by e-mail.
• March 20: Guest Lecture: Advanced threats targeting critical infrastructures by Bernhards Blumbergs (NATO CCD COE)
• April 6:
  • Draft of the report (by e-mail)
    • Abstract, outline, main references, ca. 1 page
• May 8, May 22 and May 29 Student presentations (16:00-19:15).
• June 1 Deadline for final written reports.
• Oral exam: June 10 - June 12. Location: ICT-527.

Text-books:

• Reliability engineering: theory and practice, Alessandro Birolini, Springer, 2010, 2014
• Safety-critical Computer Systems, Neil Storey, Addison Wesley, 1996.
• Fault-Tolerant Systems, Israel Koren and C. Mani Krishna, Morgan-Kaufman Publishers, 2007

Case Studies

• Registration for exam
• Registration for presentations
• Selected topics (Updated 17/04/15).
• 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).

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.
  • HiPEAC Vision 2015. Browse it. This is to give you an understanding how the embedded world is developing.

• Lecture 2 (pdf) - Basic terminology
  
  Additional reading:
  • Therac-25
  • Therac-25 investigations

• Lecture 3 (pdf) - Safety

• Lecture 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

• Guest Lecture: Advanced threats targeting critical infrastructures by Bernhards Blumbergs (NATO CCD COE)

• Lectures 6 and 7: (pdf) - Redundancy
  
  Additional reading:
  • E. Dubrova, "Fault-Tolerant Design: An Introduction".
  • Lossless data compression, especially Arithmetic coding
  • Hamming Code

Contact:

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