Software Design for Resilient Computer Systems (PDF)

This book addresses the
question of how system software should be designed to account for faults, and
which fault tolerance features it should provide for highest reliability. The
authors first show how the system software interacts with the hardware to tolerate
faults. They analyze and further develop the theory of fault tolerance to
understand the different ways to increase the reliability of a system, with
special attention on the role of system software in this process. They further
develop the general algorithm of fault tolerance (GAFT) with its three main
processes: hardware checking, preparation for recovery, and the recovery
procedure. For each of the three processes, they analyze the requirements and
properties theoretically and give possible implementation scenarios and system
software support required. Based on the theoretical results, the authors derive
an Oberon-based programming language with direct support of the three processes
of GAFT. In the last part of thisbook, they introduce a simulator, using
it as a proof of concept implementation of a novel fault tolerant processor
architecture (ERRIC) and its newly developed runtime system feature-wise and
performance-wise. The content applies to industries such as military, aviation,
intensive health care, industrial control, space exploration, etc.

·
Outlines
potential critical faults in the modern computer systems and what is required
to change them

·
Explains
how to design and re-design system software for the next generation of
computers for wider application domains and greater efficiency and reliability

·
Presents
how implemented system software support makes maintenance of computer systems
much easier, while reliability and performance increases