Foundations of Dependable Computing: System Implementation, explores the system infrastructure needed to support the various paradigms of Paradigms for Dependable Applications. Approaches to implementing support mechanisms and to incorporating additional appropriate levels of fault detection and fault tolerance at the processor, network, and operating system level are presented. A primary concern at these levels is balancing cost and performance against coverage and overall dependability. As these chapters demonstrate, low overhead, practical solutions are attainable and not necessarily incompatible with performance considerations. The section on innovative compiler support, in particular, demonstrates how the benefits of application specificity may be obtained while reducing hardware cost and run-time overhead. A companion to this volume (published by Kluwer) subtitled Models and Frameworks for Dependable Systems presents two comprehensive frameworks for reasoning about system dependability, thereby establishing a context for understanding the roles played by specific approaches presented in this book's two companion volumes. It then explores the range of models and analysis methods necessary to design, validate and analyze dependable systems. Another companion to this book (published by Kluwer), subtitled Paradigms for Dependable Applications, presents a variety of specific approaches to achieving dependability at the application level. Driven by the higher level fault models of Models and Frameworks for Dependable Systems, and built on the lower level abstractions implemented in a third companion book subtitled System Implementation, these approaches demonstrate how dependability may be tuned to the requirements of an application, the fault environment, and the characteristics of the target platform. Three classes of paradigms are considered: protocol-based paradigms for distributed applications, algorithm-based paradigms for parallel applications, and approaches to exploiting application semantics in embedded real-time control systems.

Real-time systems are now used in a wide variety of applications. Conventionally, they were configured at design to perform a given set of tasks and could not readily adapt to dynamic situations. The concept of imprecise and approximate computation has emerged as a promising approach to providing scheduling flexibility and enhanced dependability in dynamic real-time systems. The concept can be utilized in a wide variety of applications, including signal processing, machine vision, databases, networking, etc. For those who wish to build dynamic real-time systems which must deal safely with resource unavailability while continuing to operate, leading to situations where computations may not be carried through to completion, the techniques of imprecise and approximate computation facilitate the generation of partial results that may enable the system to operate safely and avert catastrophe. Audience: Of special interest to researchers. May be used as a supplementary text in courses on real-time systems.

This Open Access book introduces readers to many new techniques for enhancing and optimizing reliability in embedded systems, which have emerged particularly within the last five years. This book introduces the most prominent reliability concerns from today’s points of view and roughly recapitulates the progress in the community so far. Unlike other books that focus on a single abstraction level such circuit level or system level alone, the focus of this book is to deal with the different reliability challenges across different levels starting from the physical level all the way to the system level (cross-layer approaches). The book aims at demonstrating how new hardware/software co-design solution can be proposed to ef-fectively mitigate reliability degradation such as transistor aging, processor variation, temperature effects, soft errors, etc. Provides readers with latest insights into novel, cross-layer methods and models with respect to dependability of embedded systems; Describes cross-layer approaches that can leverage reliability through techniques that are pro-actively designed with respect to techniques at other layers; Explains run-time adaptation and concepts/means of self-organization, in order to achieve error resiliency in complex, future many core systems.

Foundations of Dependable Computing: Paradigms for Dependable Applications, presents a variety of specific approaches to achieving dependability at the application level. Driven by the higher level fault models of Models and Frameworks for Dependable Systems, and built on the lower level abstractions implemented in a third companion book subtitled System Implementation, these approaches demonstrate how dependability may be tuned to the requirements of an application, the fault environment, and the characteristics of the target platform. Three classes of paradigms are considered: protocol-based paradigms for distributed applications, algorithm-based paradigms for parallel applications, and approaches to exploiting application semantics in embedded real-time control systems. The companion volume subtitled Models and Frameworks for Dependable Systems presents two comprehensive frameworks for reasoning about system dependability, thereby establishing a context for understanding the roles played by specific approaches presented in this book's two companion volumes. It then explores the range of models and analysis methods necessary to design, validate and analyze dependable systems. Another companion book (published by Kluwer) subtitled System Implementation, explores the system infrastructure needed to support the various paradigms of Paradigms for Dependable Applications. Approaches to implementing support mechanisms and to incorporating additional appropriate levels of fault detection and fault tolerance at the processor, network, and operating system level are presented. A primary concern at these levels is balancing cost and performance against coverage and overall dependability. As these chapters demonstrate, low overhead, practical solutions are attainable and not necessarily incompatible with performance considerations. The section on innovative compiler support, in particular, demonstrates how the benefits of application specificity may be obtained while reducing hardware cost and run-time overhead.

Despite the growing interest in Real-Time Database Systems, there is no single book that acts as a reference to academics, professionals, and practitioners who wish to understand the issues involved in the design and development of RTDBS. Real-Time Database Systems: Issues and Applications fulfills this need. This book presents the spectrum of issues that may arise in various real-time database applications, the available solutions and technologies that may be used to address these issues, and the open problems that need to be tackled in the future. With rapid advances in this area, several concepts have been proposed without a widely accepted consensus on their definitions and implications. To address this need, the first chapter is an introduction to the key RTDBS concepts and definitions, which is followed by a survey of the state of the art in RTDBS research and practice. The remainder of the book consists of four sections: models and paradigms, applications and benchmarks, scheduling and concurrency control, and experimental systems. The chapters in each section are contributed by experts in the respective areas. Real-Time Database Systems: Issues and Applications is primarily intended for practicing engineers and researchers working in the growing area of real-time database systems. For practitioners, the book will provide a much needed bridge for technology transfer and continued education. For researchers, this book will provide a comprehensive reference for well-established results. This book can also be used in a senior or graduate level course on real-time systems, real-time database systems, and database systems or closely related courses.

Real-time computing plays a crucial role in our society since an increasing num ber of complex systems rely, in part or completely, on processor control. Ex amples of applications that require real-time computing include nuclear power plants, railway switching systems, automotive electronics, air traffic control, telecommunications, robotics, and military systems. In spite of this large application domain, most of the current real-time systems are still designed and implemented using low-level programming and empirical techniques, without the support of a scientific methodology. This approach results in a lack of reliability, which in critical applications may cause serious environmental damage or even loss of life. This book is a basic treatise on real-time computing, with particular emphasis on predictable scheduling algorithms. The main objectives of the book are to introduce the basic concepts of real-time computing, illustrate the most sig nificant results in the field, and provide the basic methodologies for designing predictable computing systems useful in supporting critical control applica tions. The book is written for instructional use and is organized to enable readers without a strong knowledge of the subject matter to quickly grasp the material. Technical concepts are clearly defined at the beginning of each chapter, and algorithm descriptions are reinforced through concrete examples, illustrations, and tables.

In recent years, tremendous research has been devoted to the design of database systems for real-time applications, called real-time database systems (RTDBS), where transactions are associated with deadlines on their completion times, and some of the data objects in the database are associated with temporal constraints on their validity. Examples of important applications of RTDBS include stock trading systems, navigation systems and computer integrated manufacturing. Different transaction scheduling algorithms and concurrency control protocols have been proposed to satisfy transaction timing data temporal constraints. Other design issues important to the performance of a RTDBS are buffer management, index accesses and I/O scheduling. Real-Time Database Systems: Architecture and Techniques summarizes important research results in this area, and serves as an excellent reference for practitioners, researchers and educators of real-time systems and database systems.