Implications of fault management and replica determinism on the real-time execution scheme of VOTRICS

The fault tolerant architecture VOTRICS focuses on the use of n-modular active replication of hardware. Hardware and link failures are detected by voting mechanisms realized in software. The use of active replication and the mechanisms for activities such as fault management, recovery, or keeping correct replicas synchronized (even in the presence of faults) have influences on the chosen system model and the timing behaviour of the system. The authors address these points and their implications on the underlying real-time execution scheme of VOTRICS. VOTRICS is a highly flexible message passing architecture for hardware fault tolerance. It covers different degrees of redundancy for improving the reliability, safety and availability of various applications. Typical applications are railway signalling systems or telecommunication systems