Fault Tolerant Systems

Learn about Fault Tolerant Systems

Fault Tolerant Systems course introduces basic concepts of design and implementation of fault tolerance mechanisms in general systems. Specific kind of fault tolerance are addressed, such as physical fault tolerance (adding redundant physical components), fault tolerance for information (error detecting and correcting codes) and temporal fault tolerance (via retry mechanisms). The purpose of this course is to establish fault tolerance as a measure to improve the dependability of systems in the presence of faults and correlating this dependability with the effects to the system and functional safety.

Participants in this course will be familiarized with the quantitative and qualitative methodology used in the evaluation of specific fault tolerance principles. At the end of this course, students will be able to understand and perform key alterations to system functions, components, or mechanisms, to add an appropriate level of redundancy with the goal to achieve expected reliability of systems despite the residual faults in the system design.

Course Highlights:

• Basics of fault tolerance
• Physical fault tolerance
• Fault tolerance in information exchange
• Practical considerations of fault tolerance

Course Benefits:

• Understand system and safety integrity concepts
• Be aware of threats to system dependability stemming from residual design faults or security issues
• Perform basic analysis of high-level composite system diagrams
• Identify key areas to perform dependability improvement
• Design fault tolerance mechanism in appropriate stages
• Determine the required level of redundancy for the target reliability of a system, and perform its high-level design alterations
• Design fault tolerant information exchange and applying appropriate information fault tolerance mechanisms
• Understand the relation between fault tolerance and system repair.

Course Typically Offered: Live Online during Fall and Spring quarter 

Prerequisites:  Students should have previous knowledge of selected calculus topics, such as basic differential equations, operation with matrices, Galois fields, vector spaces, and Boolean algebra. Students shall have basic knowledge of system and safety engineering and system reliability concepts, such as failure probability, reliability, failure rate, constant failure rate, MTTF, FIT, etc. or have completed the course “Systems, Functions and Safety”.

Hardware (required): Computer with Internet connection, working speakers and microphone.

Next steps:  Upon completion of this course, consider taking other courses in the Functional Safety Fundamentals For Automotive Certificate

More information: Contact unexengr@ucsd.edu to learn more about Functional Safety Fundamentals For Automotive and course offerings.