Dependable Computer Systems

This book provides comprehensive coverage of the dependability challenges in today's advanced computing systems. It is an in-depth discussion of all the technological and design-level techniques that may be used to overcome these issues and analyzes various dependability-assessment methods. The impact of individual application scenarios on the definition of challenges and solutions is considered so that the designer can clearly assess the problems and adjust the solution based on the specifications in question.

The design of computer systems to be embedded in critical real-time applications is a complex task. Such systems must not only guarantee to meet hard real-time deadlines imposed by their physical environment, they must guarantee to do so dependably, despite both physical faults (in hardware) and design faults (in hardware or software).

The design of computer systems to be embedded in critical real-time applications is a complex task. Such systems must not only guarantee to meet hard real-time deadlines imposed by their physical environment, they must guarantee to do so dependably, despite both physical faults (in hardware) and design faults (in hardware or software). A fault-tolerance approach is mandatory for these guarantees to be commensurate with the safety and reliability requirements of many life- and mission-critical applications.