The use of proof in diversity arguments
A paper "The use of proof in diversity arguments" by Bev Littlewood
has been published in Reliability Engineering and System Safety. The abstract
is given below. The full text is available for download in .pdf
format.
Abstract
The limits to the reliability that can be claimed for a design-diverse
fault-tolerant system are mainly determined by the dependence that must
be expected in the failure behaviours of the different versions: claims
for independence between version failure processes are not believable.
In this note we examine a different approach, in which a simple secondary
system is used as a back-up to a more complex primary. The secondary system
is sufficiently simple that claims for its perfection (with respect to
design faults) are possible, but there is not complete certainty about
such perfection. It is shown that assessment of the reliability of the
overall fault-tolerant system in this case may take advantage of claims
for independence that are more plausible than those involved in design
diversity.
Page maintained by: Peter Popov
Last modified 30 January 2001.