ECE Distinguished Lecture: On the Rules of Robust Design (and Why You Should Break Them)

System reliability has emerged as one of the greatest challenges to progress in the computing industry. In this talk, I will highlight some of the "rules" of robust design and show how they bind the creativity and productivity of architects and designers. I believe the best way to deal with these rules is to simply disregard them, through innovative technologies that abandon traditional design methodologies. Releasing oneself from these ties is not as hard as one might think. To support my case, I will highlight two rule-breaking design trends from my work. The first trend combines resiliency mechanisms with low-power designs to craft highly introspective and efficient systems. The second trend embraces continuous online defect testing, which holds great promise for highly reliable and inexpensive design solutions.