ECE 412 Fault-Tolerant Computing
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Instructor
Dr. Jie Han, P.Eng.
Phone: 492-1361
Email: jhan8 (and you know what follows), homepage
Office Hours: Friday, 2:00 - 3:00 pm, or by appointments.
Course Information
Lectures: Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 1:00 - 1:50 pm
Room: See Beartracks
Website: eClass @ the University (Enrolled students will be able to access it by logging into the eClass@UofA.)
Prerequisite
ECE 342 Probability for Electrical and Computer Engineers, or consent of
the Department.
Course Objectives
Students will learn the need, necessity and importance of fault tolerance in electronic circuits and engineering systems.
Students will learn the fundamental concepts and techniques used in classical fault-tolerant systems.
Students will also learn how to analyze and evaluate a fault-tolerant design, as well as recent advances in error-resilient computing.
Course Description
Basic concepts and definitions
Reliability and availability theory
Hardware fault-tolerance:
static and dynamic redundancy and repair
triple modular redundancy (TMR) and duplex systems
Poisson processes and Markov models
Reliability evaluation of logic circuits
Soft errors and mitigation techniques
Error correcting codes and resilient disk systems
Reliability in neural networks
Defect tolerance in VLSI circuits (optional)
Fault-tolerance in nanocomputing (optional)
Textbooks
Fault-Tolerant Systems, by I. Koren and C.M. Krishna, Morgan Kaufmann, Second Edition, 2020.
+ Supplementary
research papers.
Marking scheme:
Assignments: 16% (Approximately eight times)
Presentation: 14% (Project presentation: 15/8 min each, in the first half of April)
Midterm Exam: 25% (Tentatively scheduled in the last week of February)
Final Exam: 45% (Tentative date: mid or late April)
Academic integrity
The University of Alberta is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity and honesty. Students are expected to be familiar with these standards regarding academic honesty and to uphold the policies of the University in this respect. Students are particularly urged to familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Code of Student Behavior (online at www.governance.ualberta.ca ) and avoid any behavior which could potentially result in suspicions of cheating, plagiarism, misrepresentation of facts and/or participation in an offense. Academic dishonesty is a serious offense and can result in suspension or expulsion from the University.
"Recording is permitted only with the prior written consent of the professor or if recording is part of an approved accommodation plan."
© Jie Han, 202X.