Title
SafeDM: a Hardware Diversity Monitor for Redundant Execution on Non-Lockstepped Cores
Abstract
Computing systems in the safety domain, such as those in avionics or space, require specific safety measures related to the criticality of the deployment. A problem these systems face is that of transient failures in hardware. A solution commonly used to tackle potential failures is to introduce redundancy in these systems, for example 2 cores that execute the same program at the same time. However, redundancy does not solve all potential failures, such as Common Cause Failures (CCF), where a single fault affects both cores identically (e.g. a voltage droop). If both redundant cores have identical state when the fault occurs, then there may be a CCF since the fault can affect both cores in the same way. To avoid CCF it is critical to know that there is diversity in the execution amongst the redundant cores. In this paper we introduce SafeDM, a hardware Diversity Monitor that quantifies the diversity of each redundant processor to guarantee that CCF will not go unnoticed, and without needing to deploy lockstepped cores. SafeDM computes data and instruction diversity separately, using different techniques appropriate for each case. We integrate SafeDM in a RISC-V FPGA space MPSoC from Cobham Gaisler where SafeDM is proven effective with a large benchmark suite, incurring low area and power overheads. Overall, SafeDM is an effective hardware solution to quantify diversity in cores performing redundant execution.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.23919/DATE54114.2022.9774540
2022 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE)
Keywords
DocType
ISSN
avionics,specific safety measures,transient failures,potential failures,CCF,redundant cores,redundant processor,lockstepped cores,SafeDM computes data,instruction diversity,RISC-V FPGA space MPSoC,effective hardware solution,redundant execution,nonlockstepped cores,safety domain,hardware diversity monitor,common cause failures,SafeDM,Cobham Gaisler
Conference
1530-1591
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-6654-9637-7
1
0.41
References 
Authors
14
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Francisco Bas162.70
Pedro Benedicte221.16
Sergi Alcaide310.75
Guillem Cabo462.70
Fabio Mazzocchetti520.82
Jaume Abella611.42