IAF0530 / IAF9530 - Süsteemide usaldusväärsus ja veakindlus
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 2011's version of the same course.

Lectures will be held on Tuesdays, 12:00-13:30. Location: IT-209 (Raja 15)
No lecture on February 28, March 13, May 8

Important dates:

• February 28: Case study topic selection, incl. preliminary list of literature (by e-mail)
• March 20:
  • Draft of the report (by e-mail, before the lecture)
    • Abstract, outline, main references, ca. 1 page
  • Elevator pitch (max 3-5 min, 2-3 slides).
  • Slides to be sent by e-mail at least 1 hour before the lecture!
  • 26 presentations – sharp timing is mandatory!
  • Participation mandatory!
• April 17 - June 1: Student presentations. Please register here for the presentation.
  • Presentation dates: 17/04, 24/04, 15/05, 22/05, 24/05, 01/06. Always at 12:00, IT-209
  • MSc students: 20 min
  • PhD students: 30 min
  • Mandatory to participate at least on three occasions (on top of your own presentation)
• Deadline of the final report:
  • 01/06 for those who are making presentation 17/04-22/05
  • 05/06 for those who are making presentation 24/05-01/06

Case Studies

• Case Studies (read the 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 (new!).
• The Risks Digest Also an excellent source of topics (new!).
  
  
• Final list of topics and students (updated 26/03/2012).

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 perspectiv, basic terminology
  
  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.

• Lectures 2-3 (pdf) - Safety, Hazards, Risks.
  
  Additional reading:
  • 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

• Lecture 4: (pdf) - Fault Tolerance, Software Testing.
  
  Additional reading:
  • Dependable Software by Design by Daniel Jackson. Sci. Am. 2006.
  • Classic Testing Mistakes by Brian Marick. On his pages you can find some additional reading about software testing
  • Code Coverage Analysis by Bullseye.
  • Mutation Testing by Jeff Offutt. Oluliseim artikkel: Practical Mutation Testing

• Lecture 5: (pdf) - Testing Real-Time Systems.
  
  Additional reading:
  • Monitoring, Testing and Debugging of Distributed Real-Time Systems by Henrik Thane (PDF. A good overview, especially the introductory chapters)
  • Observer – Formal Online Validation of Distributed Systems (PDF)

• Lecture 6-7: Redundancy. (Lecture 6 PDF, Lecture 7 PDF)
  
  Important reading:
  • E. Dubrova, "Fault-Tolerant Design: An Introduction" (PDF).
  • Lossless data compression, especially Arithmetic coding
  • Hamming Code

• Additional material: (PDF) - Enemies of dependability. Human factors. Verification, validation.
  
  Additional reading:
  • 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
Raja 15, IT-229