John Wiley & Sons,Inc. January 2002 552 pp. $110.00 ISBN:0-471-29342-3

RELIABILITY OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS AND NETWORKS presents the fundamentals of reliability and availability analysis for various computer hardware, software, and networked systems. Important application areas such as RAID memory systems and TANDEM and STRATUS non-stop systems are included. The most readily applied methods for analysis are utilized and design techniques are derived from basic principles. Analytical simplifications and approximations are developed to validate the results of computer models used for large-scale complex problems. The text is of interest to professionals in the field and also to students. Necessary mathematical techniques are developed within the text and the required background is covered in the appendices. Each chapter ends with practice problems and ample references for further study.

PROFESSOR SHOOMAN is a member of the Computer Science Department at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, NY and is president of the consulting firm, Martin L. Shooman & Associates. He is a fellow of the IEEE, has won 5 best paper awards from the Reliability and Computer Societies, and consults for NASA, US Army, Lockheed Martin, IBM, AT&T, SAIC and many others. Dr. Shooman has lectured in Belgium, Canada, England, France, Holland and Israel. He is the author also of Probabilistic Reliability: An Engineering Approach and Software Engineering: Reliability, Design, Management.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION - Pervasiveness and Complexity of Digital Systems. Redundancy in its Various Forms, Meaning of High Reliability and Availability Specifications.

CHAPTER 2: CODING TECHNIQUES - Clear Basic Development of Error-Detecting and Correcting Codes. Effect of Failing Coder/Decoder, Parity Bit, Hamming, Reed-Solomon Codes.

CHAPTER 3: REDUNDANCY, SPARES, AND REPAIRS - Component Redundancy. System Redundancy. Standby Redundancy. Effect of Coupling Device Failures. Repair and Availability. Use of Laplace Transforms to Simplify MTBF. Initial Reliability and Steady State. Common Mode Failures. Tandem vs. Stratus Approaches. RAID Storage Systems.

CHAPTER 4: N-MODULAR REDUNDANCY - Voting and NMR. Voting at Subsystem Level. Voter Failures and Voter Redundancy. Markov Availability Models for Repairable Systems. Comparisons of TMR and 5MR with Parallel and Standby Systems. Simple Approximations for Repairable Voting Systems. Advanced Voting Techniques.

CHAPTER 5: SOFTWARE RELIABILITY AND RECOVERY - Basic Concepts of Software Reliability. Software Development Principles. Basis of Software Reliability. Software MTBF and Failure Rate. Simplified Failure Rate and Error Removal Models. Constant, Linerly Decreasing and Exponential Failure Rates. Estimation of Model Constants. Software Redundancy and Recovery Techniques. NASA Shuttle Example.

CHAPTER 6: NETWORKED SYSTEMS RELIABILITY - Graph Models for Networks. Two Terminal and N Terminal Pair Reliability and Availability. Reliability Analysis Using State-Space. Cut and Tie Sets, and Transformations. Choice of Topology for high Reliability. Introduction to the Design of a Backbone Network.

CHAPTER 7: RELIABILITY OPTIMIZATION - How to Optimize the Design of Large Systems. Optimum Reliability with Cost Constraints. Use of Apportionment Techniques. Development of Upper and Lower Bounds to Clarify Solutions and Greatly Reduce Computation Time. Ranking of Alternatives for Design Trade-Off. Multiple Constraints. Comparison of Bounded Approach with Dynamic Programming and Greedy Algorithms.

APPENDIX A: PROBABILITY - Develops Probability from Basic Principles.

APPENDIX B: RELIABILITY - Summarizes Reliability Theory, Density, Distribution and Failure Rate (Hazard) Functions. MTTF, Availability.

APPENDIX C: ARCHITECTURE - Introduction to Digital Circuit Design, Gates, Flip-Flops, Circuits, Registers, Minimization.

APPENDIX D: MODELING PROGRAMS - Discusses Reliability, Availability, Fault Tolerant and Risk Modeling programs. Provides References for Each Category of Program.

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