Basic Concepts and Advances in Fault-Tolerant Computing Design

As computing systems are becoming increasingly useful, aspects related to their fault tolerance have gained growing importance. Nowadays, fault tolerance represents a great challenge for the design of reliable systems which resist faults of different natures.This book provides the reader with an easy understanding of the major problems which have been faced, and approaches which have been proposed during the last three decades in the field of fault-tolerant computing and design. Basic concepts, advanced techniques and academic and commercial fault-tolerant systems, such as Tandem, Stratus, CM-5, Parsytec GC, etc., are presented. Great care is taken to make the chosen examples a practical illustration of presented fault tolerance techniques. Consequently, both theoretical and practical aspects of fault-tolerance are studied, making this book a suitable textbook for graduate and undergraduate courses in fault-tolerant computing and design. However, professionals in computer design and system architecture, including engineers, scientists and researchers, will also find the book a practical guide, a valuable reference and a source of the most up-to-date information in the domain.

For the sake of completeness of the various chapters, a CD-ROM is provided. This CD-ROM contains solutions to the problems given at the end of each chapter as well as additional problems. It also provides valuable pointers to internet information sites about fault tolerance aspects: books, conferences, journals, software, etc.