FASTER: The Fault Tolerant Architecture Simulation Tool for EvaluatingReliability, Introduction and Applications

摘要

FASTER (Fault Tolerant Architecture Simulation Tool for Evaluating Reliability)is a Monte Carlo Simulator which is used to evaluate reliability figures of merit for complex reconfigurable fault tolerant systems. The process used to specify a complex system is simplified with the use of constraint directed editors. The editors ease the interaction process which guides the user through system configuration and mission scenario input. Complete and well defined system specifications are produced as a result of the interactive constraint directed editors. The FASTER program was designed to be flexible, and thus allows for the modeling and evaluation of a wide range of fault tolerant system types and considerations. For example, FASTER can account for the effects of both active and standby redundancy, imperfect switching and diagnostics, multiphase mission scenarios, and various maintenance and repair philosophies such as scheduled preventive, immediate or deferred maintenance. Figures of merit calculable by the FASTER program include, but are not limited to, reliability, availability, mean-time-between-critical-failure (MTBCF), MTBF, and mean-time-to-repair (MTTR). Keywords: Fortran, VAX computers. (kr)