Course details

Fault Tolerant Systems

SOD Acad. year 2020/2021 Summer semester

Current academic year

Principles of fault tolerance, structures and techniques. Codes for control and correction of information. Cyclic codes, Fire codes, Galois fields, BCH and RS codes. Modelling, estimation and control of reliability. Fail-safe systems. Architecture of FT systems. Fault tolerance at VLSI level. Radiation safety and fault tolerance. Fault tolerance in computer units, memories, computer systems and communication networks. Fault tolerant and secure control systems. Distributed tolerant systems, fault tolerant software.

State doctoral exam - Final interview topics:

  1. Principe's, approaches and parameters of safe and fault tolerant systems.
  2. Parity codes, multidimensional parity codes, low-density parity codes, arithmentic codes, Raptor codes.
  3. Hamming codes, byte error correction codes, matrix notation of of coding and decoding.
  4. Cyclic codes, basic and fast CRC calculation.
  5. Galois finite field GF(n) construction, minimum  polynomials.
  6. Construction and applications of BCH and RS codes.
  7. Time redundancy, radiation tolerant circuits and systems.
  8. Fault tolerance in VLSI structures - memories and multiprocessors, reconfiguration, fault and error containment.
  9. Fault tolerance in communication systems.
  10. Software implemented fault tolerance, Byzantine agreement.

Guarantor

Drábek Vladimír, doc. Ing., CSc.

Course coordinator

Bidlo Michal, doc. Ing., Ph.D. (DCSY)

Language of instruction

Czech, English

Completion

Examination (written)

Time span

  • 26 hrs lectures
  • 13 hrs projects

Assessment points

  • 70 pts final exam (written part)
  • 30 pts projects

Department

Department of Computer Systems (UPSY)

Lecturer

Bidlo Michal, doc. Ing., Ph.D. (DCSY)
Drábek Vladimír, doc. Ing., CSc.

Instructor

Bidlo Michal, doc. Ing., Ph.D. (DCSY)
Drábek Vladimír, doc. Ing., CSc.

Subject specific learning outcomes and competences

Skills and approaches to building fault tolerance using hardware and codes. To research new techniques and their applications.

To get know a novel approaches to ensure availability and safety of technical means.

Learning objectives

To inform the students about different types of redundancy and its application for the design of computer systems being able to function correctly even under presence of faults and data errors. To give the students literary sources and principles of advanced topics in the area of fault and error tolerance for the choice of up-to-date research topics.

Prerequisite knowledge and skills

Computer design and software tools.

Study literature

  • Dubrova E.: Fault-Tolerant Design, Springer, 2013
  • Jang Y.: A Practical Guide to Error-Control Coding Using MATLAB, Artec House, 2010
  • Szefer J.: Principles of Secure Processor Architecture Design, Morgan & Claypool, 2019
  • Nicolaidis M.: Soft Errors in Modern Electronic Systems, Spribger, 2011
  • Shokrollahi A., Luby M.: Raptor Codes, NOW Publishers, 2011
  • Lin S. - Costello D.J.: Error Control Coding: Fundamentals and Applications, Prentice-Hall, Second Edition, 2004

Syllabus of lectures

  • FT design methodology, structures and techniques.
  • Error control codes. Parity codes, multidimensional parity codes, arithmetic codes.
  • Residue codes, Hamming codes, sparse parity codes. Raptor codes.
  • Cyclic codes, Fire codes.
  • Galois fields GF(n) and their construction, BCH and Reed-Solomon codes, byte error detection.
  • Time redundancy, alternating logic.
  • Reliability modeling, combinatorial models, MIL-HDBK-217. Markov reliability models.
  • Safe systems.
  • FT architectures.
  • VLSI fault tolerance. Radiation fault tolerance. 
  • FT in computer units, in memorie, in computer and communication systems.
  • Fault tolerant and secure control systems.
  • Distributed FT systems.
  • Software implemented fault tolerance.

Syllabus - others, projects and individual work of students

To precess the individual project assignment.

Progress assessment

Project topic selection and systematic consultatiobs.
Additional sessions after cunsultations wuth the lecturer.

Exam prerequisites:
Project development, submission and presentation.

Controlled instruction

Final exam, project submission and presentation.

 

Exam prerequisites

Project development, submission and presentation.

Course inclusion in study plans

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