Guerrilla tactics: motivating design patterns for high-dependability applications

Hardware and software components are often treated as distinct entities with different development and run-time profiles. Yet, these key design elements and components of embedded and stand-alone computing systems have an inherent vulnerability to human error. Since manufacturers of hardware make extensive use of software in producing masses of integrated devices exhibiting independent failure rates, the rapidly growing software engineering community has begun to embrace the rule-and-tool based approach of the professional engineer. Adoption of iterative design rules, tools, component reuse, and simulation/testing methodologies into every process and component required by a complex systems for highly dependable applications has the potential to minimize the propagation of human-made latent errors into fielded systems. By identifying and employing design patterns for dependability, we believe that we can mitigate the effects of human agents as single points of failure and achieve the desired dependability of the final product.