Self-stabilizing microprocessor: analyzing and overcoming soft errors

Dolev, Shlomi; Haviv, Yinnon

doi:10.1109/tc.2006.61

Cited by 35 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Recent work e.g. on scheduling of memory requests [54], transactional memory in multicores [19], and self-stabilizing microprocessors [13], as well as our own work introduced below, confirms that it is indeed possible to utilize distributed algorithms research in the VLSI context. Conversely, results and methods from VLSI-related research, as error-correcting codes, have proved useful e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 53%

Reconciling fault-tolerant distributed computing and systems-on-chip

Függer

Schmid

2011

Distrib. Comput.

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Classic distributed computing abstractions do not match well the reality of digital logic gates, which are the elementary building blocks of Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) and other Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits: Massively concurrent, continuous computations undermine the concept of sequential processes executing sequences of atomic zerotime computing steps, and very limited computational resources at gate-level make even simple operations prohibitively costly. In this paper, we introduce a modeling and analysis framework based on continuous computations and zerobit message channels, and employ this framework for the correctness & performance analysis of a distributed faulttolerant clocking approach for Systems-on-Chip (SoCs). Starting out from a "classic" distributed Byzantine fault-tolerant tick generation algorithm, we show how to adapt it for direct implementation in clockless digital logic, and rigorously prove its correctness and derive analytic expressions for worst case performance metrics like synchronization precision and clock frequency. Rather than on absolute delay values, both the algorithm's correctness and the achievable synchronization precision depend solely on the ratio of certain path delays. Since these ratios can be mapped directly to placement & routing constraints, there is typically no need This work originates in our DARTS project, which has been a joint effort of Vienna University of Technology and RUAG Space, see http://ti.tuwien.ac.at/darts for details. It has been supported by the Austrian bm:vit FIT-IT project DARTS (809456-SCK/SAI) and the Austrian FWF projects Theta (P17757), PSRTS (P20529) and FATAL (P21694).M. Függer (B) · U. Schmid Technische Universität Wien, Embedded Computing Systems Group (E182/2), Treitlstraße 3, 1040 Vienna, Austria e-mail: fuegger@ecs.tuwien.ac.at U. Schmid e-mail: s@ecs.tuwien.ac.at for changing the algorithm when migrating to a faster implementation technology and/or when using a slightly different layout in an SoC.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 53%

Reconciling fault-tolerant distributed computing and systems-on-chip

Függer

Schmid

2011

Distrib. Comput.

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“…Moreover, the processor executes a fetched command according to its specification [19]{2/3.2}, where the state of the processor when the first fetch starts is arbitrary. The assumption concerning the repeated execution of fetch-decode-execute can be achieved by techniques presented in [11] and [12].…”

Section: System Settingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This assumption is not simple to achieve since both the microprocessor [12] and the operating system should be self-stabilizing, ensuring that eventually the (self-stabilizing) application programs are executed. An elegant composition technique of self-stabilizing algorithms [13] is used here to show that once the underling microprocessor stabilizes the self-stabilizing operating system (which can be started in an arbitrary state) stabilizes, and then the self-stabilizing algorithms that implement the applications, stabilize.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Then we present a tailored very tiny self-stabilizing design for components of an operating system. Previous work: Extensive theoretical research has been done toward self-stabilizing systems [7] and recovery-oriented/autonomic-computing/self-repair, see [32,5,18,36,29,3,11,12,6,23,16] and the references therein. Some systems are built to cope with severe fault combinations such as [5,10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Toward self-stabilizing operating systems

Yagel¹

2004

Proceedings. 15th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, 2004.

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This work presents several approaches for designing self-stabilizing operating systems. The first approach is based on periodical automatic reinstalling of the operating system and restart. The second, reinstalls the executable portion of the operating system and uses predicates on the operating system state (content of variables) to ensure that the operating system does not diverge from its specifications. The last approach presents an example of a tailored self-stabilizing very-tiny operating system. Prototypes using the Intel Pentium processor were composed.

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“…For example, in [8,9], it has been shown that self-stabilizing algorithms [7], which recover even from massive transient faults, can be employed in VLSI chips. Similarly, in our DARTS 1 project (Distributed Algorithms for Robust Tick-Synchronization), we have implemented a fault-tolerant clocking scheme for SoCs by adapting a simple clock synchronization algorithm to the requirements and constraints of asynchronous digital logic [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%