sedsr soft error detection using software redundancysedsr软错误检测使用软件冗余.pdf

Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 2012, 5, 664-670 /10.4236/jsea.2012.59078 Published Online September 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jsea) SEDSR: Soft Error Detection Using Software Redundancy 1 1 2 1 1 Seyyed Amir Asghari , Atena Abdi , Hassan Taheri , Hossein Pedram , Saadat Pourmozaffari 1Computer Engineering and Information Technology Department, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran; 2Electrical Engineering Department, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Email: seyyed_asghari@aut.ac.ir, atena.abdi@aut.ac.ir, htaheri@aut.ac.ir, pedram@aut.ac.ir, saadat@aut.ac.ir Received July 3rd, 2012; revised August 7th, 2012; accepted August 20th, 2012 ABSTRACT This paper presents a new method for soft error detection using software redundancy (SEDSR) that is able to detect transient faults. Soft errors damage the control flow and data of programs and designers usually use hardware-based solutions to handle them. Software-based techniques for soft error detection force less cost and delay to systems and do not change their configuration. Therefore, these kinds of methods are appropriate alternatives for hardware-based tech- niques. SEDSR has two separate parts for data and control flow errors detection. Fault injection method is used to compare SEDSR with previous methods of this field based on the new parameter of “Evaluation Factor” that takes in account fault coverage, memory and performance overheads. These parameters are important in real time safety critical applications. Experimental results on SPEC2000 and some traditional benchmarks of this field show that SEDSR is much better than previous methods of this field. SEDSR’s evaluation factor is about 50% better than other methods of this field.