Reliability Analysis of on - Line Ckmpter

This paper discusses the reliability of operation of an on-line computer system described by a semi-Markov process model. Analytical solutions are obtained by using computer-aided algebraic manipulation techniques. This paper demonstrates that the difficulties of obtaining analytical solutions to Markov processes by standard techniques can be considerably reduced by the application of algebraic symbol manipulation languages. To the author's knowledge, the results of the reliability analysis are also new. '11 Results in this paper were obtained by using MACSlMA, available at MIT Mathematics Laboratory, supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Department of Defense, under Office of Naval Research Contract N00014-70-A-0362-0001. MACSYMA was accessed via the ARPA computer-communication network. This report was partially suppotted b> THE ALOHA SYSTRA, ,a research project at the University of Hawaii, which is supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and monitored by NASA Ames Research Center under Contract No. NAS2-8590.