软件老化的仿生机制与模型探索
Bio-inspired Mechanism and Model Exploration of Software Aging
摘要：
处于网络环境中的软件系统在长时间运行过程中会出现性能下降、可用性下降甚至崩溃的现象，即软件老化。人们对软件老化现象的研究已有15年多的历史，但大多数文献都是把软件作为一个黑箱来研究，没有一个文献揭示出我们所知的软件老化的基本机制。通过分析生物老化和软件老化之间的特点，我们发现了一些有趣的共同点，弥合了这两个看似无关的现象之间的差距。生物学中的自由基老化理论也适用于探讨软件老化的机制和模型。本文发现了软件老化中的“软件自由基”与生物老化中的自由基是等价的。在我们的研究中，“软件自由基”的积累是软件老化的根本原因。利用生物老化中的自由基建模方法，给出了一个基于反馈环的软件老化动力学模型。虽然本文没有对该建模方法给出足够的理论证明，但实践结果表明，该反馈环模型能够准确地描述软件老化的动力学过程。为了进一步验证老化机制，我们提出了几个软件复兴战略，侧重于清洁的“软件自由基”。结果表明，通过加强负反馈回路或弱化正反馈回路，可以有效地减缓软件老化。本文首次尝试通过跨学科研究来回答“软件如何老化”的问题。利用本文的结论，人们可以设计出更好的软件系统，或者在长时间运行中保持系统的高性能。
英文摘要：
Software systems situated in network environment may experience performance degradation, availability decrease and even crash during long time running, which is called software aging. This phenomenon has been studied for more than 15 years, but most of the literatures studied software as a black box, none of them uncovered the fundamental and widely accepted mechanism of software aging as far as we know. Through analyzing the characteristics between biological aging and software aging, we find some interesting common points and bridge the gap between these two seemingly unrelated phenomena. The free radical aging theory in biological studies is also applicative to explore the mechanism and model of software aging. This paper finds an equivalent concept named `software free radical' in software aging to free radical in biological aging. In our study, the accumulation of `software free radical' is a root cause of software aging. Using the free radical modeling methodology in biological aging, we give a model for describing the kinetic of software aging based on feedback loops. Although this paper doesn't give enough theoretical proof of the modeling method, the practical results show that the feedback loop model can describe the kinetic of software aging precisely. To further validate the aging mechanism, we propose several software rejuvenation strategies focusing on cleaning the `software free radical'. The results show that software aging can be mitigated effectively by strengthening negative feedback loop or weakening positive feedback loop. This paper is the first try to answer the question `How software ages' through interdisciplinary studies. Leveraging the conclusions in this paper, people can design better software systems or keep their systems at a high performance level during long time running.
机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来，可能存在错误，请以论文正文为准。
