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 2015's version of the same course.

• Registration for final discussions! May 23, 26, 31. June 1, 6.

Lectures will be held on Mondays, 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 lectures on March 7 and 14 (Tentatively). This time should be used for working with case studies
• March 7: Case study topic selection (title) + preliminary list of literature. Send by e-mail. Wait for approval.
• March 20:
  • Draft of the report (by e-mail)
    • Abstract, outline, main references, ca. 1 page
• April 11: A guest lecture by Tõnu Näks (IB Krates): Can I trust my own spec? Contracts and strong typing in practice.
  The talk will address a topic of program reliability from the viewpoint of a programmer. I will go through some programming language features (such as strong typing, assertions, contracts) that may help with ensuring the reliability of a program when used appropriately. The examples are based on practical experience of programming with C/C++, Java, VB, PHP and Ada over the last 20+ years.
• April 18, 25, May 2, 9 and 16 Student presentations (16:00-19:15, May 16 16:00-17:30).
• May 25: Deadline for final written reports.
• Oral exam & discussions: May 30 - June 5.

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
• Fault-Tolerant Design, Elena Dubrova, Springer, 2013.

Case Studies

• If you need help with writing, consider this!
• Case Studies (read this PDF!). For MSc students: 15 min presentation + 6 pages of text. For PhD students: 20 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).
  
• Chosen Topics
• Registration for presentations
• Important! - What Constitutes Plagiarism?

Lecture notes

• Lecture 1 (pdf) - Introduction, historical perspective
  
  Additional reading:
  • George Candea, "The Basics of Dependability"
  • Algirdas Avizienis, Jean-Claude Laprie, Brian Randell "Fundamental Concepts 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 and high-performance computing (HPC) world is developing.
  • 5 of the worst IT system failures
  
  
• Lectures 2, 3 & 4 (pdf) - Basic terminology, Safety, Hazards, Risks
  
  Additional reading:
  • DRAM’s Damning Defects—and How They Cripple Computers
  • Therac-25
  • Therac-25 investigations
  • 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: (pdf) - Redundancy
  
  Additional reading:
  • E. Dubrova, "Fault-Tolerant Design: An Introduction".

• Guest lecture by Tõnu Näks (IB Krates): Slides and code examples.