The version 6.2 of Mercury has been released.
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce that version 6.2 of the Mercury tool has been released to the industry and academic community.
This new version fixes several bugs found in previous versions.
If you are a Mercury user, we strongly recommend getting the new version.
We hope you will enjoy it. If you have any suggestions or find any bugs, please report them to us.
Mercury 6.2 – click here to download
What’s new in Mercury?
Below, we describe the most important features and enhancements of version 6.2:
- Transient analysis improvements for CTMC and SPN:
- Added internal step support in CTMC and SPN transient analysis.
- Improved transient plotting and enabled the “Plot Result” button in the transient simulation experiment.
- Transient SPN simulations now accept decimal values for the time parameter.
- Improved support for the CTMC log function in the graphical interface, including the -LOG option.
- Resource cleanup improvements:
- Resources retained by both SPN simulation modes are now properly released.
- SPN model import and editing improvements:
- Fixed parameter assignment when importing models via Moment Matching or EMA if parameters with the same name already exist in the model.
- Improved the layout of the distribution parameter panel and expanded the editable fields, with support for opening expressions via the “…” button.
- Expression evaluation fixes across Mercury:
- Fixed CTMC script expressions that use variables.
- Fixed the handling of SPN expressions using a unary minus, for example, -LOG{}.
- DTMC improvements:
- The GTH method is now disabled for DTMC models with absorbing states.
- Self-loop labels are now draggable.
- Fault Tree and RBD improvements:
- Added the expression button to Fault Tree and RBD editors.
- Added an Analytical/Simulation evaluation mode for RBD and Fault Tree models with non-exponential distributions.
- Added analytical computation for RBD and Fault Tree metrics, including MTTF, MTTR, reliability, unreliability, steady-state availability/unavailability, uptime, downtime, and instantaneous availability/unavailability.
- Added support for empirical distributions in RBD blocks and Fault Tree basic events.
- Improved simulation robustness and performance for RBD and Fault Tree models, including models with K-out-of-N blocks and non-exponential distributions.
- Moment Matching and EMA improvements:
- Fixed inconsistencies in the coefficient of variation between the fitted distribution result and the Coxian distribution in Moment Matching.
- Fixed EMA execution from Mercury and the generation of comments when importing EMA models.
- Model comments on robustness:
- Fixed an issue where using \centering in comments could prevent a file from reopening; the use of \begin\end is now constrained to avoid this problem.
What is the Mercury tool used for?
Mercury enables a range of models to be created and evaluated for supporting performance and dependability evaluations, such as reliability block diagrams (RBDs), dynamic RBDs (DRBDs), fault trees (FTs), event trees (ETs), energy flow models (EFMs), stochastic Petri nets (SPNs), and continuous and discrete-time Markov chains (CTMCs and DTMCs).
The tool has been cited in more than 140 scientific publications and is used in over 18 countries around the world.
Important notes on upgrading
Java 8 (1.8) is the recommended version of Java for running Mercury 6.2. Java 9 introduces the Java Platform Module System (JPMS), a new architectural design to which the tool has not yet been ported. We deliver Mercury 6.2 with the appropriate Java SE runtime environment (JRE) for Windows and *NIX systems. We also release the tool without the JRE, which is suitable for other environments. If you want to download Mercury without the JRE, you can find the recommended JRE at https://www.oracle.com/at/
Enjoy this new version!
