Design diversity: an approach to fault tolerance of design faults

Diversity of design is discussed as a means to attain fault tolerance with respect to latent design faults in software and hardware. Some potential advantages of this approach in software versus a single design protected by fault avoidance (verification, validation, and proofs) are presented. An extension to design fault tolerance in VLSI circuits is identified. The results of earlier experimental studies are reviewed, and new results of a specification-oriented multiversion software experiment are summarized.

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