What could be considered a reliable design nowadays? It is seems to be that thing are somwwhat different in today’s interconnected world compared to earlier times. Reliability Definition Is Changing article at Semiconductor Engineering magazine is a good introduction on what is changing in embedded systems design.
The complexity and vulnerabilities in systems are raising questions about what constitutes a fully functional design.Nowadays reliability measurements increasingly involve one device connected to one or more other devices, and reliability may be as dependent on those other devices as the design of the initial device. The big picture extends well beyond the device being designed and tested because embedded devices are changing in the way they are put together.
This is especially true in increasingly Internet of Things filled world. A typical IoT device/service now has three elements: the edge node (under mechanical or local control), the central node (interacts with the edge node), and the application that runs on the mobile client and interacts with the device over a hub. A problem in any one of those areas can affect reliability in the other two. And when problems do occur, it can be difficult to determine where the fault is: It might be the hardware, it might be the software that controls the hardware, or it might be in the communication infrastructure that is out of the control of everyone involved in creating the device.
The problem can be temporary or permanent. I have been building distributed systems for a long time, and I can fully agree with this. There are temporary faults and determining the reason for fault is often very had and time consuming. Looking for the source of the problem for temporary but quite rare problems is very hard.
And finally, even if all of the technology works as planned, there are gaping security holes in designs at every process node and in almost every IoT design—even if it’s only what a well-design piece of hardware or software is connected to. It’s obvious a device that is compromised is no longer reliable. But a device that can be compromised isn’t reliable, either. There is a frenzy of activity in the security world these days. All of the processor companies have been active in securing their cores. Securing the processor core can help in some cases, but it is only just a small piece in the large security puzzle.
While engineers can only control their own piece of the ecosystem, reliability may be harder to define within those bounds in the future. Each piece needs to be engineered as best as it possibly can, but that doesn’t mean it will be reliable in the real world because there are so many other factors that can affect it.
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