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Chapter 29

The Tandem 16: A Fault-Tolerant Computing System1

James A. Katzman

Summary A fault-tolerant computer architecture is examined that is commercially available today and installed in many industries. The hardware is examined in this paper and the software is examined in the companion paper.
 

Introduction

The increasing need for businesses to go on-line is stimulating a requirement for cost effective computer systems having continuous availability [Katzman, 1977; Tandem, 1976]. Certain applications such as automatic toll billing for telephone systems lose money each minute the system is down, and the losses are irrecoverable. Systems commercially available today have met a necessary requirement of multiprocessing but not the sufficient conditions for fault-tolerant computing.

The greatest dollar volumes spent on systems needing these fault-tolerant capabilities are in the commercial on-line, data base transaction, and terminal oriented applications. The design of the Tandem 16 NonStop2 system was directed toward offering the commercial market an off-the-shelf, general purpose system with at least an order of magnitude better availability than existing off-the-shelf systems without charging a premium. This was accomplished by using a top down system design approach, thus avoiding the shortcomings of the systems currently addressing the fault-tolerant market.

Except for some very expensive special systems developed by the military, universities, and some computer manufacturers in limited quantities, no commercially available systems have been designed for continuos availability. Some systems such as the ones designed by ROLM have been designed for high MTBF by "ruggedizing," but typically computers have been designed to be in a monolithic, single processor environment. As certain applications demanded continuous availability, manufacturers recognized that a multiprocessor system was necessary to meet the demands for availability. In order to preserve previous development effort and compatibility, manufacturers invented awkward devices such as I/O channel switches and interprocessor communication adapters to retrofit existing hardware. The basic flaw in this effort is that only multiprocessing was achieved. While that is necessary for continuously available systems, it is far from sufficient.

Single points of failure flourish in these past architectures (Fig. 1). A power supply failure in the I/O bus switch or a single integrated circuit (IC) package failure in any I/O controller on the I/O channel emanating from the 1/0 bus switch will cause the entire system to fail. Other architectures have used a common memory for interprocessor communications, creating another single point of failure. Typically such systems have not even approached the problem of on-line maintenance, redundant cooling, or a power distribution system that allows for brownout conditions. In today's marketplace, many of the applications of fault-tolerant systems do not allow any down time for repair.

Expansion of a system such as the one in Fig. 1 is prohibitively expensive. A three processor system, strongly connected in a redundant fashion, would require twelve interprocessor links on the I/O channels; five processors would need forty links; for n processors, 2n(n-1) links are required. These links often consist of 100-200 IC packages and require entire circuit boards priced between $6,000 and $10,000 each. Using the I/O channel in this manner limits the I/O capabilities as a further undesirable side effect. The resulting hardware changes for expansion, if undertaken, are typically dwarfed in magnitude by the software changes

1© 1977. Reprinted with the express permission of Tandem Computers Inc., Cupertino, Calif.
2NonStop is a trademark of Tandem Computers.

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