Fault-Tolerant Parallel and Distributed Systems

The most important uses of computing in the future will be those related to the global "digital convergence" where all computing becomes digital and inter-networked. This convergence will be propelled by new and advanced applications in storage, searching, retrieval and exchanging of information in a myriad of forms. All of these will place heavy demands on large parallel and distributed computer systems because these systems have high intrinsic failure rates. The challenge to the computer scientist is to build a system that is inexpensive, accessible and dependable. The chapters in this book provide insights into many of these issues and others that will challenge researchers and applications developers. Included among these topics are fault-tolerance in communication protocols for distributed systems (including synchronous and asynchronous group communication), methods and approaches for achieving fault-tolerance in distributed systems (such as those used in networks of workstations), dependable cluster systems and scalable-coherent-interfaces-based local-area multi-processors, general models and features of distributed safety-critical systems built from commercial off-the-shelf components as well as service dependability in telecomputing systems, dependable parallel systems for real-time processing of video signals, and embedding in faulty multi-processor systems, broadcasting, system-level testing techniques, on-line detection and recovery from intermittent and permanent faults. The book is a collection of chapters with contributions by experts working on fault-resilient applications. The numerous techniques and methods covered are of relevance to researchers, developers and graduate students.

Table of Contents:
I Fault-Tolerant Protocols.- 1. Comparing Synchronous and Asynchronous Group Communication.- 2. Using Static Total Causal Ordering Protocols to Achieve Ordered View Synchrony.- 3. A Failure-Aware Datagram Service.- II Fault-Tolerant Distributed Systems.- 4. Portable Checkpoint For Heterogeneous Architectures.- 5. A Checkpointing-Recovery Scheme for Domino-Free Distributed Systems.- 6. Overview of a Fault-Tolerant System.- 7. An Efficient Recoverable DSM on a Network of Workstations: Design and Implementation.- 8. Fault-Tolerant Issues of Local Area Multiprocessors (LAMP) Storage Subsystem.- 9. Fault-Tolerance Issues in RDBMS on SCI-Based Local Area Multiprocessor (LAMP).- III: Dependable Systems.- 10. Distributed Safety-Critical Systems.- 11. Dependability and Other Challenges in the Collision Between Computing and Telecommunication.- 12. A Unified Approach for the Synthesis of Scalable and Testable Embedded Architectures.- 13. A Fault-Robust SPMD Architecture for 3D-TV Image Processing.- IV: Fault-Tolerant Parallel Systems.- 14. A Parallel Algorithm for Embedding Complete Binary Trees in Faulty Hypercubes.- 15. Fault-Tolerant Broadcasting in a K-ary N-cube.- 16. Fault Isolation and Diagnosis in Multiprocessor Systems with Point-to-Point Communication Links.- 17. An Efficient Hardware Fault-Tolerant Technique.- 18. Reliability Evaluation of a Task Under a Hardware Fault-Tolerant Technique.- 19. Fault Tolerance Measures for m-ary n-dimensional Hypercubes Based on Forbidden Faulty Sets.- 20. Dynamic Fault Recovery for Wormhole-Routed Two-Dimensional Meshes.- 21. Fault-Tolerant Dynamic Task Scheduling Based on Dataflow Graphs.- 22. A Novel Replication Technique for Implementing Fault-Tolerant Parallel Software.- 23. User-Transparent Checkpoing and Restart for Parallel Computers.