Fault-Tolerant Systems

Description

The mixture of hardware and software discussions in the book is appealing. The authors describe the theory behind designing and modelling systems against failures in their components. There is a brief coverage of coding theory. This is a subject on which ample numbers of books have been dedicated. The text explains enough elementary theory to motivate subsequent forays into understanding redundancy in software systems. Note too that at the hardware level, it is not just a single fault tolerant computer that is covered. Another important subtopic is message routing. And how this can be done in a network even if some routers fail, or are overloaded. One example, which you don't see everyday, is of a hypercube and how to route between nodes when some intermediate nodes time out. For readers interested only in hardware exor software, the book furnishes a good introduction. With the possible benefit that you can compare analysis across hardware and software. You might later want to consult more advanced books closer to your interest.