SYSTEMS APPROACH TO COMPUTING DEPENDABILITY IN AND OUT OF HITACHI

摘要

Authors and their colleagues have been contributing to dependable computing for the wide lines of Hitachi products since 1960. Fault-tolerance concept was not permitted under the company motto that no fault by fault-avoidance technology was one of engineering achievements. Suppose the bullet train system "Shinkansen" would have a failure, no need to explain social damage. Nowadays dependability concept seems accepted but failures are never permitted to keep our society safe and comfortable. In order to meet it, we took systems architecture and intelligence approaches chasing property of creatures from architectural and intellectual viewpoints though we never gave up fault-avoidance. Autonomous Decentralization Concept (ADC) was extracted in late 1970s. The basic principle is that the system state with no faulty part is only one of numerous states. Intelligent behavior is necessary to play autonomy and decentralization. We started AI technology around 1980. Hitachi Group has applied autonomous decentralization systems technology and AI technology to its computing systems and enjoyed their business with good reputation. The authors present their R&D activities namely at Systems Development Laboratory and practices in and out of the group. Finely future R&D horizon for dependable information systems is presented as the extension of the past and the present R&D.