Intermittent Failures in Hardware and Software

Bakhshi, Roozbeh; Kunche, Surya; Pecht, Michael

doi:10.1115/1.4026639

Cited by 26 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…A forty year old paper by Malaiya and Su [30] investigated intermittent faults in integrated circuits. A similar study was made more recently by Bakhshi et al [6]. Both Malaiya and Su, and Bakhshi et al came to similar conclusions regarding intermittent faults caused by HW: temperature, loose connectors, bad soldering, corrosion, and voltage fluctuations.…”

Section: Rq1 Revisited In Light Of Related Worksupporting

confidence: 69%

Intermittently Failing Tests in the Embedded Systems Domain

Strandberg¹,

Ostrand²,

Weyuker³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Software testing is sometimes plagued with intermittently failing tests and finding the root causes of such failing tests is often difficult. This problem has been widely studied at the unit testing level for open source software, but there has been far less investigation at the system test level, particularly the testing of industrial embedded systems. This paper describes our investigation of the root causes of intermittently failing tests in the embedded systems domain, with the goal of better understanding, explaining and categorizing the underlying faults. The subject of our investigation is a currently-running industrial embedded system, along with the system level testing that was performed. We devised and used a novel metric for classifying test cases as intermittent. From more than a half million test verdicts, we identified intermittently and consistently failing tests, and identified their root causes using multiple sources. We found that about 1-3% of all test cases were intermittently failing. From analysis of the case study results and related work, we identified nine factors associated with test case intermittence. We found that a fix for a consistently failing test typically removed a larger number of failures detected by other tests than a fix for an intermittent test. We also found that more effort was usually needed to identify fixes for intermittent tests than for consistent tests. An overlap between root causes leading to intermittent and consistent tests was identified. Many root causes of intermittence are the same in industrial embedded systems and open source software. However, when comparing unit testing to system level testing, especially for embedded systems, we observed that the test environment itself is often the cause of intermittence.

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Section: Rq1 Revisited In Light Of Related Worksupporting

confidence: 69%

Intermittently Failing Tests in the Embedded Systems Domain

Strandberg¹,

Ostrand²,

Weyuker³

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This is due to the fact that measurements from various soft-sensors carry different information about characteristics and dynamics. Another factor is transient and intermittent faults that occur sporadically during the processes [21], [22]. These faults are arbitrary and it is difficult to pinpoint their causes due to their complex nature.…”

Section: A Seagate Wafer Soft-sensing Toosletmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft-Sensing ConFormer: A Curriculum Learning-based Convolutional Transformer

Yella¹,

Zhang²,

Petrov³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…For example, vibration can cause IFs of connectors and wire bonds. Coefficient of thermal expansion mismatch can cause IFs of wire bonds because of temperature change [5], [8].…”

Section: Fault Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The transition relationships between consecutive fault nodes from time t to time t + t are determined using the equations in Table I and (1)- (8). The total failure rate and repair rate of each component are provided in Table II.…”

Section: B Fault Diagnosis Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They are difficult to detect because they are not easy to verify, replicate, or localize to a specific failure location, mode, or mechanism. The costs caused by TF and IF could be much higher than that by PFs, because the maintenance team has to run many tests to detect these faults [7], [8]. A common example of TF/IF occurs when a computer hangs up.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A Dynamic-Bayesian-Network-Based Fault Diagnosis Methodology Considering Transient and Intermittent Faults

Cai

Liu

Xie

2017

IEEE Trans. Automat. Sci. Eng.

225

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Transient fault (TF) and intermittent fault (IF) of complex electronic systems are difficult to diagnose. As the performance of electronic products degrades over time, the results of fault diagnosis could be different at different times for the given identical fault symptoms. A dynamic Bayesian network (DBN)based fault diagnosis methodology in the presence of TF and IF for electronic systems is proposed. DBNs are used to model the dynamic degradation process of electronic products, and Markov chains are used to model the transition relationships of four states, i.e., no fault, TF, IF, and permanent fault. Our fault diagnosis methodology can identify the faulty components and distinguish the fault types. Four fault diagnosis cases of the Genius modular redundancy control system are investigated to demonstrate the application of this methodology. Note to Practitioners-This paper is motivated by the problem of fault diagnosis of complex electronic systems in the presence of transient fault (TF) and intermittent fault (IF). Existing approaches do not involve the dynamic behavior of electronicsystems, i.e., degradation and aging. The results of fault diagnosis could be different at different times for the given identical fault symptoms because of the degradation and aging. This paper suggests a new fault diagnosis approach using dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs). It aims at identifying the component faults and distinguishing the fault types, i.e., TF, IF, and permanent faults. We construct the DBN structure and parameter models and define two judgment rules to determine the fault diagnosis results. The future scope of work can be directed toward the development of a practice fault diagnosis system for an electronic system to validate the proposed methodology. Index Terms-Dynamic Bayesian network (DBN), fault diagnosis, intermittent fault (IF), transient fault (TF).

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Intermittent Failures in Hardware and Software

Cited by 26 publications

References 22 publications

Intermittently Failing Tests in the Embedded Systems Domain

Intermittently Failing Tests in the Embedded Systems Domain

Soft-Sensing ConFormer: A Curriculum Learning-based Convolutional Transformer

A Dynamic-Bayesian-Network-Based Fault Diagnosis Methodology Considering Transient and Intermittent Faults

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