Reliability Behavior of Combined Hardware-Software Systems

With the recognization that software reliability behavior is fuzzy or possibilistic, rather than probabilistic, in nature, and the assumption that hardware reliability behavior is probabilistic in nature, in this paper we show how to integrate fuzzy methodology and probabilistic methodology to characterize combined hardware-software reliability behavior. In concrete, the notions of canonical computer, possibilistic survival (PS-) function, and possibilistic vulnerary (PV-) function are introduced, and the combined hardware-software reliability behavior is demonstrated, respectively, for canonical computers, series computer systems and parallel computer systems. Thus this paper provides basic concepts and fundamental analysis and modeling methodology to characterize combined hardware-software reliability behavior of computer systems.