A Perspective on the State of Research in Fault-Tolerant Systems

As computers take on a greater role in society, their dependability is becoming increasingly important. Given software's critical role in computing systems, reliable software has emerged as crucial to achieving a dependable infrastructure. Using a system perspective that recognizes the prominence of software, we characterize the current state of fault-tolerance research as it contributes to the dependability of computer systems, and we conjecture on future directions for this research area.