Dependable Computing Systems

ECE/CS 4434/6434
Fall 2024

Computing systems are used in various critical domains including aerospace, energy, transportation, healthcare, and commerce. Failures of these systems may lead to catastrophic consequences such as injury, loss of life, damage to equipment, or financial loss.
This course focuses on techniques for designing and analyzing dependable computing systems that can continue to operate correctly in the presence of software and hardware problems. We will learn what can go wrong, how we can predict, prevent, and detect faults/errors, and how we can design systems that can tolerate faults and recover from failures.

Topics:

• Introduction to dependable computing
• Basic terminology, attributes, and evaluation techniques
• Combinatorial and state-space modeling
• Hardware fault tolerance
• Information redundancy
• Software fault tolerance
• Checkpointing and recovery
• Reliable networked systems
• Error detection techniques
• Dependability evaluation techniques
• Safety and Security of Cyber-Physical Systems
• Dependable and Secure Machine Learning Systems

Time: Mon/Wed 9:30 - 10:45 AM
Location: Thornton Hall D115

Instructor: Homa Alemzadeh, ha4d@virginia.edu - Office: 259 Olsson Hall (Link Lab)
Teaching Assistants: Seyed Hamid Reza Roodabeh

Instructor Office Hours: Mon/Wed 12:00-12:30 PM or by appointment
TA Office Hours: TBD or by appointment

UVA Canvas Site (For lecture notes, homework submission, grading)
Piazza (For questions, discussions, and polls)

Pre-requisites: This course is intended for graduate and senior-level undergraduate students. A basic knowledge of probability and computer architecture is required. A working knowledge of programming is required for homework and final project.

Grading:

UG: 5% - GRAD: 5%

Class Participation/Activity		5%
Presentations:
-- Short presentations on real-world reliability/safety/security incidents/issues
-- Paper Presentations		UG: 0% - GRAD: 10%
Homework		UG: 25% - GRAD: 15%
Final Project		30%
Midterm Exam		15%
Final Exam (Take Home)		20%

There will be a 10% penalty for late homework (per school day). You will also have a grace period of three days for the whole course to address any unexpected events such as sickness, traveling, other deadlines, interviews, etc. This means that you can always submit late assignments (except the presentation slides and the final exam), but if you don't use more than three late days, you will not be penalized in any way. The late penalties and the grace period will be accounted at the end of the semester. Also, your lowest grades for homework and class activity will be dropped. 

References:

• I. Koren and C. Mani Krishna, Fault-tolerant Systems, 1^st edition, 2007, Morgan Kaufmann (Available here through UVA Library).
• J. Knight, Fundamentals of Dependable Computing for Software Engineers, 2012, CRC Press (Available here through UVA Library).
• K. Trivedi, Probability and Statistics with Reliability, Queuing and Computer Science Applications, 2^nd edition, 2001, John Wiley & Sons (Available here through UVA Library).
• D. K. Pradhan, Fault Tolerant Computer System Design, 1^st edition, 1996, Prentice-Hall.
• B. W. Johnson, Design and Analysis of Fault Tolerant Digital Systems, 1988, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co.