Computer Systems Engineering

Life cycle Nature of life cycle

• Role of life cycle model
• quality relationship
• choice of life cycle model role of system size
• Agility issues

Requirements

• analysis
  • identification of needs
  • feasibility considerations
  • economic considerations
• Nature of requirements
  • functional requirements
  • non-functional requirements
    • Range of possibilities
    • Quantification issue
• Prototyping, simulation, modeling
• Human factors
  • standards
  • user interface design
• Building expertise over time
• Role of experts and experience
• Specific applications
  • building computer systems
    • desktops
    • laptops
    • hand-held devices
    • digital cameras
    • mobile phones
    • video phones

Specification

• Functional specification
• non-functional specification
• Quality
  • completeness
  • consistency
  • simplicity
  • verifiability
  • basis for design
  • failure modes
• Test plans
  • indpendence of specification
  • safety cases
  • Limitations
  • Degraded operation mode

Architectural design

• system and subsystem division
• High quality design elements
• System-level strategies
  • diagnostics
  • hardware/software interface
• Achieving reliability
  • Redundancy
  • independence of designs
  • separation of concerns
  • specification of subsystems
  • selection of subcontractor
• Approaches
  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses
• Design to achieve performance measures
  • Reliability
  • Safety
• Common Cause failure
• Failure modes
  • approaches to fault tolerant design
  • Dealing with failure

Testing

• Nature of testing
  • throughout life cycle
  • efficient
  • effective
• Test plans
  • nature
  • purpose
• Approaches
  • White box
  • Black box
  • regression testing
  • stress testing
  • interface testing
• Tool support
• System-level test and diagnosis
• Printed circuit board testing
• MCM testing
• core-based testing
• Software testing

Maintenance

• Inevitability
• Patterns of behavior
  • Hardware
  • Software
  • Commnication
  • Trends
• Measurement
  • Bottlenecks
• Nature of maintenance
  • Defect removal
  • Upgrade
  • Enhancement
• Impact analysis
  • Decision making
  • configuration control
• Configuration management and version control
  • need
  • issues
  • information to be held
  • legal requirements
  • disaster planning
• Tool support
• Building expertise for later re-use
  • issues
  • balances
  • options

Concurrent (hardware/software) design

• Applications areas reuiring hardwre/software coordination
  • speech coders
  • radio modems
• Hard real-time requirements
• Hardware - software co-design

Implementation

• Choosing technologies for particular purposes
• Rapid applications development
• Role of standards and documentation
• Ensuring levels of performance
  • Nature of tests
  • regression testing
• Technology specific issues

Specialized systems

• Risk and hazard analysis
  • strategies for risk reduction
  • risk control
  • implications for implementation
  • Preliminary hazard analysis
• Concept of integrity level
  • quantification
  • impact on life cycle
• Safety critical systems
  • safety plan
• Security critical systems
  • High integrity functions
  • ensuring performance
• design issues
• Strategies for performance levels
  • safety
  • reliability
  • security
• International standards
• Legal Requirements

Reliability and Fault tolerance

• Reliability and availability modeling
• Hardware redundancy
• Error detecting
• Error correction
• Sofware approaches to tolerating hardware faults
• Software reliability models
• Software fault-tolerance methods
  • N-version programming
  • recovery blocks
  • rollback and recovery
• Fault tolerance in operating systems
• Fault tolerance in database systems
• Fault tolerance in distributed systems
• Fault tolerance in transaction processing systems
• Fault tolerant systems for aerospace, telecommunications and industrial control

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