Preface This textbook serves as an introduction to fault tolerance, intended for upper division undergraduate students, graduate-level students, and practicing engineers in need of an overview of the ﬁeld. Readers will develop skills in modeling and evaluating fault-tolerant architectures in terms of reliability, availability, and safety. They will gain a thorough understanding of fault-tolerant computing, including both the theory of how to achieve fault tolerance through hardware, software, information, and time redundancy and the practical knowledge of designing fault-tolerant hardware and software systems. The book contains eight chapters covering the following topics. Chapter 1 is an introduction, discussing the importance of fault tolerance in developing a dependable system. Chapter 2 describes three fundamental characteristics of dependability: attributes, impairment, and means. Chapter 3 introduces dependability evaluation techniques and dependability models such as reliability block diagrams and Markov chains. Chapter 4 presents commonly used approaches for the design of fault-tolerant hardware systems, such as triple modular redundancy, standby redundancy, and self-purging redundancy and evaluates their effect on system dependability. Chapter 5 shows how fault tolerance can be achieved by means of coding. It covers many important families of codes, including parity, linear, cyclic, unordered, and arithmetic codes. Chapter 6 presents time redundancy techniques which can be used for detecting and correcting transient and permanent faults. Chapter 7 describes the main approaches for the design of fault- tolerant software systems, including checkpoint and restart, recovery blocks, N-version programming, and N self-checking programming. Chapter 8 concludes the book. The content is designed to be highly accessible, including numerous examples and problems to reinforce the material learned. Solutions to problems and Power- Point slides are available from the author upon request. Stockholm, Sweden, December 2012 Elena Dubrova vii

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Preface

This textbook serves as an introduction to fault tolerance, intended for upperdivision undergraduate students, graduate-level students, and practicing engineersin need of an overview of the field. Readers will develop skills in modeling andevaluating fault-tolerant architectures in terms of reliability, availability, andsafety. They will gain a thorough understanding of fault-tolerant computing,including both the theory of how to achieve fault tolerance through hardware,software, information, and time redundancy and the practical knowledge ofdesigning fault-tolerant hardware and software systems.

The book contains eight chapters covering the following topics. Chapter 1 is anintroduction, discussing the importance of fault tolerance in developing adependable system. Chapter 2 describes three fundamental characteristics ofdependability: attributes, impairment, and means. Chapter 3 introduces depend-ability evaluation techniques and dependability models such as reliability blockdiagrams and Markov chains. Chapter 4 presents commonly used approaches forthe design of fault-tolerant hardware systems, such as triple modular redundancy,standby redundancy, and self-purging redundancy and evaluates their effect onsystem dependability. Chapter 5 shows how fault tolerance can be achieved bymeans of coding. It covers many important families of codes, including parity,linear, cyclic, unordered, and arithmetic codes. Chapter 6 presents time redun-dancy techniques which can be used for detecting and correcting transient andpermanent faults. Chapter 7 describes the main approaches for the design of fault-tolerant software systems, including checkpoint and restart, recovery blocks,N-version programming, and N self-checking programming. Chapter 8 concludesthe book.

The content is designed to be highly accessible, including numerous examplesand problems to reinforce the material learned. Solutions to problems and Power-Point slides are available from the author upon request.

Stockholm, Sweden, December 2012 Elena Dubrova

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