A HOLISTIC VIEW AT DEPENDABLE EMBEDDED SOFTWARE-INTENSIVE SYSTEMS

Embedded software-intensive systems are already almost "omnipresent" - and key to most of the innovations today and in the future in almost all domains of our life. Reliance on their services became a critical issue, although humans are very well able to adapt to unsatisfactory performance and reliability to a certain extend - today's Windows-PCs. SPAM-emails and Interned are very good examples. Dependability as a complex "umbrella"-property is key to massive, ubiquitous deployment and use of embedded smart systems, including sub-properties such as safety, reliability, availability, security, maintainability, survivability. These properties are, depending on the application, not independent: they can he complimentary, or even contradictory. Embedded systems are completely, integrated in their environment ("hidden" computing"), and in man-v cases integrated in networks of different connectivity, interacting with each other, with humans and environment via various means. They consist of control units, sensors, actuators, "intelligence" ("smart systems") - to serve our needs and fulfil their tasks in a safe and reliable manner. Applications include critical systems such as sea, ground and air transport, medical devices, industrial and power plant control, surveillance and monitoring, emergency systems, other working environments, and less critical ones for communication, info-/edutainment and entertainment. The paper will demonstrate that mass deployment of networked, dependable systems implies a new, holistic system view on critical systems, and how the challenges should be addressed by proper system assessment and evaluation, architecture, design, development, validation and maintenance.