Re: IEC 61508 and SIL definitions



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From: Peter Bishop (pgb(at)adelard.com)
Date: Fri 16 Jul 2004 - 09:58:21 BST


On 15 Jul 2004 at 7:50, Peter B. Ladkin wrote:

>      [PBL] That's one catastrophic airplane-model
>      failure every 14 months. Happy with that? I wouldn't fly on an
>      airplane of which some example broke apart every 14 months.
> 
>      [PB] Surely the point of setting claim limits on an SRS
>      is that you need to use **several** **diverse** safety functions
>      to achieve a tolerable accident rate.
> 
>      Nobody is stopping you having several safety functions in the
>      aircraft to prevent the same accident(s).
> 
> I don't think I was claiming that IEC 61508 *forces* one to build
> inappropriate devices. But that is the argument your comment seems to
> address.

In that case - what is the issue you are worried about?
the 61508 rules only put a reliability limit on one SRS
but there is no limit on the number of different SRS

So isn't the question:
>      that's one catastrophic airplane-model
>      failure every 14 months. Happy with that? 
based on a false premise that only one SRS is allowed? 
-- 
Peter Bishop 
Adelard LLP and Centre for Software Reliability, City University
Drysdale Building, 10 Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB
Tel: +44-20-7490-9467, Fax: +44-20-7490-9451
pgb(at)adelard.com, http://www.adelard.com/
pgb(at)csr.city.ac.uk, http://www.city.ac.uk/

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