INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR INFORMATION PROCESSING

WG 10.4 on DEPENDABLE COMPUTING AND FAULT TOLERANCE

IFIP Working Group 10.4 was established by the IFIP General Assembly in October 1980, and operates under IFIP Technical Committee TC-10, "Computer Systems Technology". The charter of WG 10.4 (established 1980, revised 1988) states the aim and the scope of the WG:

Aim. Increasingly, individuals and organizations are developing or procuring sophisticated computing systems on whose services they need to place great reliance. In differing circumstances, the focus will be on differing properties of such services -- e.g., continuity, performance, real-time response, ability to avoid catastrophic failures, prevention of deliberate privacy intrusions. The notion of dependability, defined as the trustworthiness of a computing system which allows reliance to be justifiably placed on the service it delivers, enables these various concerns to be subsumed within a single conceptual framework. Dependability thus includes as special cases such attributes as reliability, availability, safety, security. The Working Group is aimed at identifying and integrating approaches, methods and techniques for specifying, designing, building, assessing, validating, operating and maintaining computer systems which should exhibit some or all of these attributes.
Scope. Specifically, the Working Group is concerned with progress in:

Understanding of faults (accidental faults, be physical, design-induced, originating from human interaction; intentional faults) and their effects.

Specification and design methods for dependability.

Methods for error detection and processing, and for fault treatment.

Validation (testing, verification, evaluation) and design for testability and verifiability.

Assessing dependability through modeling and measurement.

History. The idea of WG 10.4 was formulated during the IFIP Working Conference on Reliable Computing and Fault Tolerance on September 27-29, 1979 in London, England, held in conjunction with the Europ-IFIP 79 Conference. Algirdas Avižienis (USA, then Lithuania) and Alain Costes (France), who organized the London Conference and proposed the formation of the Working Group, were appointed as Chair and Vice Chair, respectively, of the new WG 10.4 in 1980. WG leadership has included:

1980-86. Chair: Algirdas Avižienis (USA, then Lithuania). Vice Chair: Alain Costes (France).
1986-95. Chair: Jean-Claude Laprie (France). Vice Chairs: John F. Meyer (USA), Yoshihiro Tohma (Japan).
1996-98. Chair: Hermann Kopetz (Austria). Vice Chairs: Jacob A. Abraham (USA), Hirokazu Ihara (Japan).
1999-2005. Chair: Jean Arlat (France). Vice Chairs: Takashi Nanya (Japan), William H. Sanders (USA).
2006-current. Chair: Richard D. Schlichting (USA). Vice Chair: Karama Kanoun (France).

The first meeting of the WG 10.4 was held in Portland, Maine, USA from June 22- 23,1981, and was attended by the 29 founding members. Since then, the membership has grown to 68 members (including 12 Emeritus members) from 12 countries. Fifty-two WG 10.4 meetings have been held in various locations, including USA (24 meetings), France (9), Japan (3), Canada, Germany, Italy, and UK (2 each), and Australia, Austria, Brazil, Cape Verde, India, South Africa, Sweden, and Tunisia (1 each).

Workshops. The main goal of WG 10.4 meetings is to conduct in-depth discussions of important technical topics in the form of workshops focusing on selected key topics. A principal theme since the first meeting has been the understanding and exposition of the fundamental concepts of dependable computing. Other major topics that have been the subject of workshops include the following:

Distributed computing, parallel computing, real-time systems, certification of dependable systems, specification methods, design diversity, specification and validation of hard dependability requirements, methodologies for experiments, VLSI testing and fault tolerance, hardware- and-software testing and validation, fault tolerance in new architectures, communication networks, algorithms for distributed agreement, cars and computers, accidental vs. intentional faults, robotics and dependability, limits in dependability, avionics and dependability, dependability issues in medical computing, security and dependability, tools for dependable system design and evaluation, railway safety, safety cases, dependability in automotive electronics, computer systems benchmarking with applications to dependability, time and dependability, dependability, survivability, and integrity in e-commerce transactions and infrastructure, dependability benchmarking, utilization of formal methods in dependable systems, challenges and directions for dependable computing, dependability and survivability, middleware for adaptivity and dependability, measuring assurance in cyberspace + hardware design and dependability, open source and dependability, human computer interaction and dependability, autonomic web computing, grid computing and dependability + nomadic computing and dependability, dependability in robotics and autonomous systems, infrastructure security and operational challenges of service provider networks, critical infrastructure protection, and achieving and assessing safety with computing systems.

Electronic versions of the slides presented at the various workshops are available from the 37th WG meeting in 2000 onward -- simply follow links associated with the topics listed above. The complete list of related workshop topics and links to these slides can also be found here. In addition to one or more workshops, each meeting also includes research reports that are presented by members and guests, and the WG business meeting. Electronic versions of the presentations made during the research reports sessions and the open part of the business meeting are also available from the 47th meeting in 2005 that corresponds to the workshop on "autonomic web computing".

Conference Activities. In addition to the group meetings, seven IFIP Working Conferences on Dependable Computing for Critical Applications (DCCA) were organized by WG 10.4 between 1989 and 1999. Specifically, DCCA was held as follows:

DCCA-1: Santa Barbara, California, USA, August 1989.
DCCA-2: Tucson, Arizona, USA, February 1991.
DCCA-3: Palermo, Italy, September 1992.
DCCA-4: San Diego, California, USA, January 1994.
DCCA-5: Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA, September 1995.
DCCA-6: Grainau, Gemany (near Garmisch-Partenkirchen), March 1997.
DCCA-7: San Jose, California, USA, January 1999.

The proceedings were published as books in the series Dependable Computing and Fault-Tolerant Systems, described further below.

IFIP WG 10.4 has had a long involvement with what is now the IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN). Beginning in 1982, the WG began serving as a cooperating sponsor of one of DSN's predecessor conferences, the annual IEEE International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing (FTCS) organized by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Fault-Tolerant Computing, now called the TC on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance (TC-DCFT). This was continued until 2000, when DSN was formed by combining FTCS and DCCA into a single conference. At this point, the WG became a co-sponsor of the event in conjunction with the IEEE CS TC-DCFT. Since 2000, DSN has been held as follows:

DSN-2000: New York, New York, USA, June 2000.
DSN-2001: Gothenburg, Sweden, July 2001.
DSN-2002: Washington, DC, USA, June 2002.
DSN-2003: San Francisco, California, USA, June 2003.
DSN-2004: Florence, Italy, June-July 2004.
DSN-2005: Yokohama, Japan, June-July 2005.
DSN-2006: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, June 2006.
DSN-2007: Edinburgh, United Kingdom, June 2007.

Beginning in 2007, the DSN conference reinstated the numbering scheme started with FTCS-1 in 1971, making the formal name of the most recent conference "The 37th Annual IEEE/IFIP Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks". This name emphasizes the continuity of this line of major conferences on this crucial topic.

The DSN-2008 conference will take place in June 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska, USA. As it has for a number of years, this year's DSN will feature two symposia, the Dependable Computing and Communications Symposium (DCCS) and the Performance and Dependability Symposium (PDS). In addition, there will be a number of other activities, including tutorials, workshops on new and timely topics, opportunities for the presentations of recent results in "Fast Abstracts" sessions, and a Student Forum. Everyone is cordially invited to participate and attend!

WG 10.4 also supports a number of other conferences by providing "in-cooperation" status. Past and current examples include:

SAFECOMP, the International Conference on Computer Safely, Reliability and Security.
PRDC, the IEEE Pacific Rim Symposium on Dependable Computing.
EDCC, the European Dependable Computing Conference.
LADC, the Latin American Dependable Computing Conference.
ISORC, the IEEE Symposium on Object-Oriented Real-Time computing.

In addition, the WG has played an active role in various offerings of the IFIP World Computer Congress. In 2004, the WG organized a special event entitled Fault Tolerance for Trustworthy and Dependable Information Infrastructures as part of the series of "Topical Days" held during the 18th IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC-2004) in Toulouse, France. This event was organized to honor Algirdas Avižienis, co-founder of WG 10.4, whose pioneering and leading work has shaped the discipline of fault-tolerant and dependable computing. In 2006, the WG assisted with the Conference on Biologically Inspired Cooperative Computing (BICC-2006), which was organized by TC-10 as part of the 19th IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC-2006) in Santiago, Chile. One component of this involvement was the invited talk given by Algirdas Avižienis entitled "An Immune System Paradigm for the Assurance of Dependability of Collaborative Self-Organizing Systems." The next congress will be held in Milan, Italy in September 2008 (WCC-2008).

Publications. In 1987, the WG initiated the book series Dependable Computing and Fault-Tolerant Systems. Initially published by Springer-Verlag, this series is now published by the IEEE Computer Society Press. Twelve volumes have been published, including a five-language volume (English, French, German, Italian and Japanese) on the Basic Concepts of Dependability and the associated terminology, and a thirteenth book is in preparation. The WG also actively supports together with the IEEE CS TC-DCFT the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC). Of particular note is that a paper giving an update on conceptual issues and terminology entitled "Basic Concepts and Taxonomy of Dependable and Secure Computing" appeared in the first issue in 2004.

Special Interest Group. In addition to its regular activities, the WG established in 1999 a Special Interest Group (SIG) focusing on Dependability Benchmarking (SIGDeB). Since that time, SIGDeB has held several working meetings and organized the topical Workshop for the Winter 2001 meeting of the WG. The SIGDeB organized two Workshops on Dependability Benchmarking, respectively in conjunction with DSN-2002 (url: http://www.laas.fr/~kanoun/ifip_wg_10_4_sigdeb/external/02-06-25/index.html), and with the 16th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE-2005) on November 8, in Chicago, IL, USA, and held a joint DCCS & PDS Panel on this topic at DSN-2005. The SIGDeB also organized a Workshop in conjunction with the 16th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering in 2005 in Chicago, Illinois, USA (ISSRE-2005). The current chair of SIGDeB is Karama Kanoun (France) and the current Vice Chair is Lisa Spainhower (USA).

The most recent activity of SIGDeB has been the development of a book on dependability benchmarking to be published by the IEEE Computer Society Press in late 2007 as part of the Dependable Computing and Fault-Tolerant Systems series.

Chair:

Richard D. Schlichting
AT&T Labs-Research, E221
180 Park Avenue
Florham Park, NJ 07974, USA
Phone: +1 973 360 8234
Fax: +1 973 360 8077
EMail: rick

research.att.com

Vice Chair:

Karama Kanoun
LAAS - CNRS
7, Avenue du Colonel Roche
31077 Toulouse Cedex 4, France
Phone: +33 5 61 33 62 35
Fax: +33 5 61 33 64 11
EMail: kanoun

laas.fr

Members

(* Emeritus)

Jacob A. Abraham (jaacerc.utexas.edu): University of Texas at Austin (USA)
Tom Anderson (Tom.Andersonnewcastle.ac.uk): Centre for Software Reliability
Dept. of Computing Science
Univ. of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK)
Jean Arlat (jean.arlatlaas.fr): LAAS - CNRS (France)
Algirdas Avižienis* (avizadm.vdu.lt or avizcs.ucla.edu): University Vytautas Magnus (Lithuania)
Roberto Baldoni (Roberto.Baldonidis.uniroma1.it): Universita di Roma "La Sapienza" (Italy)
Andrea Bondavalli (a.bondavallidsi.unifi.it): University of Florence (Italy)
Nicholas S. Bowen (bowennus.ibm.com): IBM Server Group (USA)
Ram Chillarege (ramchillarege.com): Chillarege Inc. (USA)
Alain Costes (costeslaas.fr): LAAS - CNRS (France)
Mario Dal Cin* (dalcingmx.de): (Germany)
Xavier Defago (defagojaist.ac.jp): Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Felicita Di Giandomenico (felicita.digiandomenicoisti.cnr.it): ISTI-CNR (Italy)
Kevin R. Driscoll (kevin.driscollhoneywell.com) Honeywell Laboratories (USA) Christof Fetzer (cf2inf.tu-dresden.de): University of Dresden (Germany)
George C. Gilley* (gcgilleyverizon.net): (USA)
Jack Goldberg* (jackgoldbergearthlink.net): (USA)
Walter L. Heimerdinger (walthoneywell.com: (USA)
Günter Heiner* (guenter.heinerieee.org): (Germany)
Matti Hiltunen (hiltunenresearch.att.com): AT&T Labs - Research (USA)
Hirokazu Ihara* (iharacoral.ocn.ne.jp): Hiro Systems (Japan)
Ravishankar K. Iyer (iyercrhc.uiuc.edu): Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
Farnam Jahanian (farnameecs.umich.edu): University of Michigan (USA)
William C. Jones* (wcjonesalum.mit.edu): (USA)
Zbigniew Kalbarczyk (kalbarcrhc.uiuc.edu): University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA)
Nobuyasu Kanekawa (nobuyasu.kanekawa.efhitachi.com): Hitachi Research Laboratory; Hitachi, Ltd. (Japan)
Karama Kanoun (kanounlaas.fr): LAAS - CNRS (France)
Kane Kim (kaneece.uci.edu): UCI (USA)
Johan Karlsson (johance.chalmers.se): Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden)
Chandra M.R. Kintala (kintalayahoo-inc.com) Yahoo! Labs, India Yoshiaki Koga* (yoshi.koganifty.com): National Defense Academy (Japan)
Philip Koopman (koopmancmu.edu): Carnegie-Mellon University (USA)
Hermann Kopetz (hkvmars.tuwien.ac.at): Vienna University of Technology (Austria)
Jaynarayan H. Lala (Jay_LalaRaytheon.com): Raytheon (USA)
Carl Landwehr (landwehrisr.umd.edu): Institute for Systems Research; University of Maryland (USA)
Jean-Claude Laprie (laprielaas.fr): LAAS - CNRS (France)
Bev Littlewood (b.littlewoodcsr.city.ac.uk): Centre for Software Reliability
City University, London (UK)
Henrique Madeira (henriquedei.uc.pt): Univ. of Coimbra (Portugal)
Eliane Martins (elianeic.unicamp.br): Univ. of Campinas (Brazil)
Roy A. Maxion (maxioncs.cmu.edu): Carnegie-Mellon University (USA)
Edward J. McCluskey (ejmcrc.stanford.edu): Center for Reliable Computing; Stanford University (USA)
John F. Meyer* (jfmeecs.umich.edu): The University of Michigan (USA)
Michele Morganti (Michele.Morgantiicn.siemens.it): Siemens (Italy)
Takashi Nanya (nanyahal.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp): Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST); The University of Tokyo (Japan)
Priya Narasimhan (priyacs.cmu.edu): Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
Stefan Poledna (polednatttech.com): TTTech (Austria)
David Powell (David.Powelllaas.fr): LAAS - CNRS (France)
Brian Randell* (brian.randellnewcastle.ac.uk): Dept. of Computing Science; Univ. of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK)
David A. Rennels* (rennelscs.ucla.edu): UCLA (USA)
John Rushby (rushbycsl.sri.com): SRI International (USA)
William H. Sanders (whsuiuc.edu): Information Trust Institute,
University of Illinois (USA)
O. Sami Saydjari (ssaydjariCyberDefenseAgency.com): Cyber Defense Agency (USA)
Richard D. Schlichting (rickresearch.att.com): AT&T Labs - Research (USA)
Daniel P. Siewiorek (dpscs.cmu.edu): Carnegie-Mellon University (USA)
Luca Simoncini (l.simonciniiet.unipi.it): University of Pisa (Italy)
T. Basil Smith (tbsmithus.ibm.com): IBM Research (USA)
Lisa Spainhower (lisaus.ibm.com): IBM Poughkeepsie (USA)
Lorenzo Strigini (striginicsr.city.ac.uk): Centre for Software Reliability
City University, London (UK)
Robert J. Stroud (Robert.Stroudcsr.city.ac.uk): Centre for Software Reliability
City University, London (UK)
Neeraj Suri (suriinformatik.tu-darmstadt.de): Darmstadt University of Technology (Germany)
Yoshihiro Tohma* (yoshi.tohmacocoa.plala.or.jp): (Japan)
Jan Torin* (jan.torintelia.com): (Sweden)
Kishor S. Trivedi (kstee.duke.edu): Center for Advanced Computing and Communications
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Duke University (USA)
Paulo Verissimo (pjvdi.fc.ul.pt): Navigators Group; University of Lisboa (Portugal)
Aad van Moorsel (aad.vanmoorselnewcastle.ac.uk): Dept. of Computing Science; Univ. of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK)
Chris J. Walter (cwalterwwtechnology.com): WW Technology Group (USA)
Charles B. Weinstock (weinstocksei.cmu.edu): Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
Haruo Yokota (yokotacs.titech.ac.jp): Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan)
Tomohiro Yoneda (yonedanii.ac.jp): National Institute of Informatics (Japan)
Ying C. (Bob) Yeh (ying.c.yehboeing.com): Boeing (USA)

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