A Software Architecture for Dependable and Evolvable Industrial Computing Systems

The downtime of a large industrial operation is often prohibitively expensive and a failure of a mission critical system could have disastrous consequences. Lacking an effective approach to mitigate the risks in system upgrades or to introduce third party supplied open system components, many industrial systems and defense systems are forced to keep outdated computing hardware and software. A paradigm shift is needed, from a focus on enabling technologies for completely new installations to one which is designed to mitigate the risk and cost of bringing new technology into functioning systems. Innovative technology is needed to support the task of technology insertion. Quickly and reliably turning unparalleled American innovations into industrial competitiveness and defense technological superiority is of strategic importance. The Simplex architecture has been developed to support safe and reliable online upgrade of hardware and software components in spite of errors in the new modules. This paper gives a brief overview of the underlying technologies.