Reliability and modeling of systems integrated with firmware and hardware

Abstract

Firmware is embedded software in hardware devices and they play important role for many critical systems' function. Firmware failure rate in operation should be quite lower than the application software which is operating on it. Most of the study on software reliability deals with systems during development, and it is also important to study the integrated system during operation. Complex systems usually have a bathtub-shaped failure rate over the lifecycle of the product. This paper discusses the parametric analysis of model given by Haupt and Schäbe (1992), exponentiated Weibull distribution and models generated from Pareto and Weibull distribution, as well as their possible application to modeling firmware system failure. In addition, the Safety Integrity Levels (SIL) stipulated in IEC 61508 are taken into account in the modeling since the safety-critical systems in general are firmware-dominated. © World Scientific Publishing Company.