Resilient computing: An engineering discipline
Luca Simoncini · 2009
The termresiliencyhas been used in many fields like child psychology, ecology, business, and several others, with the common meaning of expressing the ability to successfully accommodate unforeseen environmental perturbations or disturbances. The adjectiveresilienthas been in use for decades in the field of dependable computing systems however essentially as a synonym of fault-tolerant, thus generally ignoring the unexpected aspect of the phenomena the systems may have to face. These phenomena become of primary relevance when moving to systems like the future large, networked, evolving systems constituting complex information infrastructures - perhaps involving everything from super-computers and huge server ldquofarmsrdquo to myriads of small mobile computers and tiny embedded devices, with humans being central part of the operation of such systems. Such systems are in fact the dawning of the ubiquitous systems that will support Ambient Intelligence. With such ubiquitous systems, what is at stake is to maintain dependability, i.e., the ability to deliver service that can justifiably be trusted, in spite of continuous changes. Therefore the termresilienceandresilientcomputingcan be applied to the design of ubiquitous systems and defined as the search for the following property:thepersistenceofservicedeliverythatcanjustifiablybetrusted,whenfacingchanges. Changes may be of different nature, with different prospect and different timing. Therefore the design of ubiquitous systems requires the mastering of many, often separated, engineering disciplines that span from advanced probability to logic, from human factors to cryptology and information security and to management of large projects. From an educational point of view, very few, if any, Universities are offering a comprehensive and methodical track that is able to provide students with a sufficient preparation that makes them able to cope with the challenges posed by the design of ubiquitous systems. In Europe an activity has started towards the identification of a MSc curriculum in Resilient Computing as properly providing a timely and necessary answer to requirements posed by the design of ubiquitous systems. To this aim, a Network of Excellence ReSIST - Resilience for Survivability in IST-was run from January 2006 to March 2009 (see http://www.resist-noe.org). In this presentation the results of ReSIST will be presented as well as the identified MSc curriculum in Resilient Computing, to share its experience and to involve a much larger, open and qualified community in the discussion of the proposed curriculum.