Diversity (technology)
In technology, diversity is understood as a strategy to increase reliability .
Systems are not only designed redundantly , but different implementations and no identical individual systems or components are used. The idea behind this is that systems that do the same but are implemented differently are also differently sensitive or insensitive to a given disturbance and therefore probably not all fail at the same time. The effect of this concept is comparable to that of species diversity in biology .
The actual implementation can look different depending on the area of application and required security:
- Use of components from different manufacturers
- Use of different protocols to control devices
- Use of completely different technologies, for example an electrical and a pneumatic control.
Example: In modern large aircraft, the autopilot is controlled by up to six computers, some of which are supplied by different manufacturers and whose software was written in different programming languages by several independent programmers.