A tool for reliability and availability prediction

As the number of embedded systems in everyday usage has been increasing at an enormous rate recently, the demand for reliable and readily available systems is continuously growing. Problems in reliability and availability are typically detected after system implementation, when fault correction and modifications are difficult and expensive to implement. This is why a new method has been developed for predicting reliability and availability already from architectural models. However, to be beneficial in system development, the prediction method should enable quick, easy and repeatable quality analysis. Therefore, the different procedures and features of the method require tool support. Our contribution is the tool that supports reliability and availability prediction at the architectural level. The tool enables a representation of these two quality attributes in the architecture, and assists in analyzing system reliability and availability using architectural models. The tool has been tested and validated by using it for reliability and availability prediction in a case example.