Professor
Kevin W. Bowyer
Homework Three – Analysis of properties of different
safety-critical systems.
Create a table that
summarizes the important properties of different safety-critical systems that
use computer hardware and software. Have
one row in the table for each of at least twelve different safety-critical
systems. Ballistic missile defense will
be one of these. Others might include
space shuttle control, nuclear reactor control, air traffic control, radiation
therapy systems, or others that you come up with. Have one column in the table for each of at
least ten different application properties that may make it easier or harder to
design and implement a reliable system, or that may make the impact of failure
larger or smaller. Examples might
include “must respond in real time to sensed values,” “must communicate between
distributed computing units,” “must operate under attack,” or others that you
come up with. Entries in the table might
be yes / no based on whether the system has the given property or not, or high
/ medium / low based on who much the system is affected, or whatever is
appropriate to the properties you choose to analyze. The point is to identify properties that best
characterize the difficulty of the problem.
Once you have filled in all the entries in the table, order the rows so
that the most difficult system to develop is at the top, followed by the next
most difficult, and so on.
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Properties of Safety-Critical Systems |
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System |
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Responds to sensed values
in real time |
Communicates between
distributed computing units |
Operates while under
attack |
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Ballistic Missile Defense |
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Yes, multiple |
Yes |
Yes |
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Radiation therapy |
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Yes, one |
No |
No |
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System 2 |
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System 3 |
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Follow the table with one
paragraph that summarizes which safety-critical system you identify as the most
difficult implementation task and why it is the most difficult.
Your response for this
homework should be about one to two pages in length.