Honeywell International Inc.

Alliedsignal Inc.

Jeffrey Xiaofeng Zhou

Mohamed F Younis

James Wolter Ernst

Thomas Gilbert Roden, Iii

Louis P Bolduc

Dar-Tzen Peng

A stand alone Redundancy Management System (RMS) provides a cost-effective solution for managing redundant computer-based systems in order to achieve ultra-high system reliability, safety, fault tolerance, and mission success rate. The RMS includes a Cross Channel Data Link (CCDL) module and a Fault Tolerant Executive (FE) module. The CCDL module provides data communication for all channels, while the FTE module performs system functions such as synchronization, data voting, fault and error detection, isolation and recovery. System fault tolerance is achieved by detecting and masking erroneous data through data voting, and system integrity is ensured by a dynamically reconfigurable architecture that is capable of excluding faulty nodes from the system and re-admitting healthy nodes back into the system.

Method and apparatus for managing redundant computer-based systems for fault tolerant computing

A method for strong partitioning of multi-processor applications that maintains fault containment on the VMEbus is presented. The method implements a message passing mechanism to increase fault tolerance and localize and contain detected faults on any one card connected to a VMEbus. Software implementation supports message-based inter-module communications using the available features provided by the VME cards. A portion of each VME card's global memory is allocated upon initialization for supporting the message passing mechanism. Access to the message buffer is restricted to read-only for modules that do not own that buffer. An error detection or correction code (e.g. cyclic redundancy check) is appended to the end of a data stream message to contain faults and prevent their propagation to other VME cards.

Method for strong partitioning of a multi-processor VME backplane bus

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Ellicott City, MD, United States of America

Jeffrey Xiaofeng Zhou