The Jean-Claude Laprie Award in Dependable Computing has been awarded annually since 2012 by the IFIP Working Group 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance in his honour.

The award recognizes outstanding papers that have significantly influenced the theory and/or practice of Dependable Computing. It takes the form of a memorial plaque presented to the author(s) at the Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN).

Any paper relating to dependable and secure computing, and published at least 10 years prior to the award year (e.g., 2011 or earlier for the 2021 award), is eligible to be considered.

The award seeks to recognize papers that have had a significant impact in the intervening years in one or more of the three following categories:

  • Technical/scientific research impact
  • Industrial/commercial product impact
  • Broad impact on the dependable computing community

Winner of the 2021 Jean-Claude Laprie Award

For 2021, the Award Committee has chosen the paper: “Measurement and Modeling of Computer Reliability as Affected by System Activity” by Ravishankar K. Iyer, David J Rossetti and Mei-Chen Hsueh. ACM TOCS 1986.

The Award Citation:

“Measurement and Modeling of Computer Reliability as Affected by System Activity” was published in ACM Transactions on Computer Systems in 1986 and was one of the first papers to perform empirical studies of failures in real systems (IBM Mainframe and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Computing System).

The paper showed that there exists a strong correlation between the nature of the workload and its intensity and the failure rate of the system. This was a seminal result in that it showed that one needs to understand the overall system’s composition and behavior, in order to make predictions of its overall reliability. It also established the primary role of empirical measurements of failures of real systems, rather than rely upon (simple) analytical or simulation models of failures, and hence established the scientific foundations of the field of empirical reliability measurement.

The paper has had a tremendous impact in shaping subsequent empirical studies, as well as those in analytical modelling of computer systems. The idea has been incorporated in classical dependability textbooks (e.g., Reliable Computer Systems: Design and Evaluation, Third Edition, by Daniel P. Siewiorek, Robert S. Swarz), dependability tools (e.g., SHARPE) and into many commercial systems for dependability measurement (e.g., by IBM). This paper has been considered a landmark paper in the field of computer system reliability by the evaluation committee, which resulted in its unanimous selection for the award.”

About Jean-Claude Laprie

Jean-Claude Laprie (1944-2010) was Directeur de Recherche at LAAS-CNRS. He devoted his entire career to research into the dependability of computing systems. His unique capability of abstraction and formalization, and his contributions to the formulation of the concepts and methodologies of dependability were influential in defining and unifying the field of dependable and secure computing, rapidly leading to national and international recognition. He received the IFIP Silver Core in 1992, the Silver Medal of French Scientific Research in 1993 and the Grand Prize in Informatics of the French Academy of Science in 2009. He was made Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 2002.

Citations and more information on the Jean-Claude Laprie awards can be found at the award web page.