Dependable Embedded 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.

"This book covers aspects of system design and efficient modelling, and also introduces various fault models and fault mechanisms associated with digital circuits integrated into System on Chip (SoC), Multi-Processor System-on Chip (MPSoC) or Network on Chip (NoC)"--

This is the first edition of 'The Engineering of Reliable Embedded Systems': it is released here largely for historical reasons. (Please consider purchasing 'ERES2' instead.) [The second edition will be available for purchase here from June 2017.]

This fascinating new work comes complete with more than 100 illustrations and a detailed practical prototype. It explores the domains encountered when designing a distributed embedded computer control system as an integrated whole. Basic issues about real-time systems and their properties, especially safety, are examined first. Then, system and hardware architectures are dealt with, along with programming issues, embodying desired properties, basic language subsets, object orientation and language support for hardware and software specifications.

This book presents a new approach to on-line observation and concurrent checking of processors by refining and improving known techniques and introducing new ideas.The proposed on-line error detection and fast recover techniques support and complement other established methods. In combination with other on-line observation priniciples and with a combined hardware-software test, these techniques are used to fulfill a complete self-check scheme for an embedded processor.

This is a book about the development of dependable, embedded software. It is for systems designers, implementers, and verifiers who are experienced in general embedded software development, but who are now facing the prospect of delivering a software-based system for a safety-critical application. It is aimed at those creating a product that must satisfy one or more of the international standards relating to safety-critical applications, including IEC 61508, ISO 26262, EN 50128, EN 50657, IEC 62304, or related standards. Of the first edition, Stephen Thomas, PE, Founder and Editor of FunctionalSafetyEngineer.com said, "I highly recommend Mr. Hobbs' book."

As software systems become ubiquitous, the issues of dependability become more and more critical. Given that solutions to these issues must be taken into account from the very beginning of the design process, it is appropriate that dependability is addressed at the architectural level. This book results from an effort to bring together the research communities of software architectures and dependability. Inspired by the ICSE 2003 Workshop on Software Architectures for Dependable Systems, the book focuses on topics relevant to improving the state of the art in architecting dependable systems. The 15 thoroughly reviewed papers originate partly from the workshop; others were solicited in order to achieve complete coverage of all relevant aspects. The papers are organized into topical sections on architectures for dependability, fault-tolerance in software architectures, dependability analysis in software architectures, and industrial experience.

"This book is a comprehensive text for the design of safety critical, hard real-time embedded systems. It offers a splendid example for the balanced, integrated treatment of systems and software engineering, helping readers tackle the hardest problems of advanced real-time system design, such as determinism, compositionality, timing and fault management. This book is an essential reading for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in a wide range of disciplines impacted by embedded computing and software. Its conceptual clarity, the style of explanations and the examples make the abstract concepts accessible for a wide audience." Janos Sztipanovits, Director E. Bronson Ingram Distinguished Professor of Engineering Institute for Software Integrated Systems Vanderbilt University Real-Time Systems focuses on hard real-time systems, which are computing systems that must meet their temporal specification in all anticipated load and fault scenarios. The book stresses the system aspects of distributed real-time applications, treating the issues of real-time, distribution and fault-tolerance from an integral point of view. A unique cross-fertilization of ideas and concepts between the academic and industrial worlds has led to the inclusion of many insightful examples from industry to explain the fundamental scientific concepts in a real-world setting. Compared to the first edition, new developments in complexity management, energy and power management, dependability, security, and the internet of things, are addressed. The book is written as a standard textbook for a high-level undergraduate or graduate course on real-time embedded systems or cyber-physical systems. Its practical approach to solving real-time problems, along with numerous summary exercises, makes it an excellent choice for researchers and practitioners alike.