CS 503-3
Fault-Tolerant Computing Systems
Catalog Description
An introduction to different aspects of fault-tolerance in computing systems. Concurrent checking techniques. Redundancy techniques. Evaluation methods. System-level diagnosis and fault-tolerant VLSI architectures.
Prerequisite:
CS 401.
Objectives
The objectives of this course are:
i) to give the students an introduction to the different aspects of fault detection, diagnosis and tolerance in computer systems in general
ii) to prepare the background such that students will be able to carry out further work in a more specialized fashion in any of these areas.
Course Outline
| Lectures | ||
| 1. | Introduction : Fault Characterization, reliability modeling, physical faults and fault models. | 3 |
| 2. | Test generation in digital systems : concepts, structural level and functional level test generation, random testing. | 6 |
| 3. | Design for testability : testability measures, scan techniques, testable networks, syndrome testability. | 6 |
| 4. | Fault Simulation : simulation models, algorithms for simulation and evaluation, parallel and deductive fault simulation. | 6 |
| 5. | Coding Techniques: parity check, unidirectional, arithmetic and communication codes and properties, self-checking circuits, fault-tolerant combinational and sequential machines. | 6 |
| 6. | System Diagnosis : Digraph models, diagnosability analysis and algorithms, distributed diagnosis. | 6 |
| 7. | Fault-tolerant VLSI based architectures : Interconnection networks, binary cube, graph networks, dynamic reconfiguration. | 6 |
| Total | 40 | |
| Note: In any specific offering some of the areas mentioned above may be emphasized more at the cost of others. | ||