Software Related Failures on the IBM 3081: A Relationship with System Utilization.

reportActive / Technical Report | Accession Number: ADA118289 | Open PDF

Abstract:

This paper presents an analysis of software-related system failures on the IBM 3081 at SLAC. We find three broad categories of failures error handling, control or logic problems and hardware-related. A statistical analysis shows not unexpectedly a decreasing failure rate with time, This is especially true in the early part of the study. Not withstanding the decreasing failure with time, we find that the occurrence of failures is strongly correlated with the type and level of workload prior to the occurrence of a failure. For example, it is shown that the risk of a software-related failure increases in a non-linear fashion with the amount of interactive processing, as measured by paging rate and system overhead. The paper employs a statistical model to describe the load dependency and offers explanations for the observed phenomenon. Author

Author(s):
Rossetti, David J. ; Iyer, Ravishankar K.
Author Organization(s):
STANFORD UNIV CA COMPUTER SYSTEMS LAB
Descriptive Note:
Technical rept.,
Supplementary Note:
DOI: 10.21236/ADA118289
Pagination:
0052

Security Markings

DOCUMENT & CONTEXTUAL SUMMARY

Distribution:
Approved For Public Release

RECORD

Collection: TR
Identifying Numbers
Report Number(s):
CSL-TN-209, CRC-TR-82-8
Contract/Grant Number(s):
DAAG29-82-K-0105
Monitor Series:
18690.2-EL
 Subject Terms
Joint Capability Areas:
JCA_5_Command and Control; JCA_5.3_Planning; JCA_1_Force Support; JCA_1.2_Force Preparation; JCA_6_Net Centric; JCA_6.2.1_Information Sharing; JCA_6.2.2_Computing Services; JCA_6.2_Enterprise Services; JCA_1.2.7_Experimentation; JCA_4.3_Maintain; JCA_6.4.1_Secure Information Exchange; JCA_1.2.5_Lessons Learned
Modernization Areas:
Fully Networked C3
Communities of Interest:
Engineered Resilient Systems
Descriptor(s):
*Computer program reliability, *Failure(Electronics), *Systems analysis, Utilization, Error analysis, Computer logic, Statistical analysis, Work, Loading(Electronics), Mathematical models, High energy, Particles, Physics
Field(s)/Group(s):
Computer Programming and Software, Nuclear Physics and Elementary Particle Physics
Keyword(s):
IBM 3081 computers, Systems utilization, LPN ARO P 18690 EL
Report Date:
1982 Jun 01