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 2012's version of the same course.

Lectures will be held on Thursdays, 14:00-15:30. Location: IT-209 (Raja 15)

Major change in course schedule!

• No meetings on March 21, March 28, April 4!
• March 28 presentations are cancelled, however you are required to send the draft and slides by deadline!
• Special reading assignment to cover the missing lecture.
  • Please read the following two texts: Where testing fails and Where testing fails, part 2. Please reflect back, why errors escape detection during the testing. I also encourage you to find additional information from the web. For the MSc students the length of the text must be at least 5000 characters (without spaces). Please use the case study template (see below).
  • PhD students should also read in addition a paper from Antonia Bertolino. Software Testing Research: Achievements, Challenges, Dreams and to discuss not only the existing problems in testing, but also the future ones. Length of the text: min 10 000 characters (without spaces). MSc students can do this for extra credit.
  • Deadline: April 4, 23:59. I am available for consultations over the e-mail.
• We’ll meet again on April 11. New location: TTÜ ICT building (Akadeemia tee 15a), room 507 A/B
• Last lecture: April 25!

Important dates:

• February 14: Case study topic selection, incl. preliminary list of literature (by e-mail).
• March 28:
  • Draft of the report (by e-mail, before the lecture)
    • Abstract, outline, main references, ca. 1 page
  • Slides to be sent by e-mail. No presentations!
• May 9 - May 23: Student presentations. Please register here for the presentation.
  • Presentation dates: 09/05, 16/05, 23/05. Always at 14:00, ICT-507AB
  • MSc students: 15 min presentation + 5 min for questions
  • PhD students: 25 min presentation + 5 min for questions
  • Mandatory to participate at least on two occasions
• May 30: Deadline of the final report
• June 5 - June 6: Final discussions and examination (individually).

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.
• The Risks Digest Also an excellent source of topics.
  
  
• Final list of topics and students and the latest status (updated 16/05/2013).

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.
  • 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

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

• Lecture 4 (pdf) - Risk Analysis.
  
  Additional reading:
  • Methods of Determining Safety Integrity Level

• Lecture 5: (pdf) - Fault Tolerance, Software Testing, Testing Real-Time Systems.
  
  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. The most interesting to read: Practical Mutation Testing
  • 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. (pdf)
  
  Important reading:
  • E. Dubrova, "Fault-Tolerant Design: An Introduction" (PDF).
  • Lossless data compression, especially Arithmetic coding
  • Hamming Code

• Lecture 8: (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
Akadeemia tee 15a, room ICT-527