Experimentally evaluating an automatic approach for generating safety-critical software with respect to transient errors

Abstract

: This paper deals with a software modification strategy allowing on-line detection of transient errors. Being based on a set of rules for introducing redundancy in the high-level code, the method can be completely automated, and is therefore particularly suited for low-cost safety-critical microprocessor-based applications. Experimental results are presented and discussed, demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach in terms of fault detection capabilities. .

Comparative Evaluation of an Error Checking Approach for MPSoC

“…On the other hand, data-flow checking techniques rely on redundant computation by replicating instructions. This section describes the technique based on the introduction of additional executable assertions to check the correct execution of the program control flow [11] and the technique based on a set of rules for introducing redundancy in the high-level code for detecting transient error affected data [8].…”

“…In literature [8], the author proposed a method which performs control flow and data detection by redundancy. Its basic ideas behind a set of transformation rules to get data and code redundancy is as following:…”

“…The hybrid integrates the solutions presented in [8] and [11], moves the computer effort to external Infrastructure IP (I-IP) to reduce its cost and enhance its performance in terms of fault detection capabilities. It is not only addresses faults affecting both data integrity and control flow check, but demonstrates that cleverly combining together the previous approaches result in higher detection capabilities with reduced overhead.…”

“…At present, several error detection techniques have been proposed in the literature [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14], where each option has different tradeoff options in terms of energy, performance, area, coverage, complexity, and programmer effort. Software-based techniques introduce some sort of redundancy by adding code executed in microprocessor.…”

A source-to-source compiler for generating dependable software

“…It is able to detect a wide range of faults, and is not limited to a specific fault model (e.g., faults in the data, or faults affecting the control flow, only); therefore, it concurrently deals with faults affecting the data as well as the program flow. For example, faults induced in the system by highly energized particles such as the one produced by radioactive sources [13]. The results we gathered to analyze the method effectiveness show that programs hardened according to our rules attain high fault coverage figures, at a cost of an increase in the code size and a slow-down in the performance.…”