Object duplication for improving reliability

ABSTRACT

Soft errors are becoming a common problem in current systems due to the scaling of technology that results in the use of smaller devices, lower voltages, and power-saving techniques. In this work, we focus on soft errors that can occur in the objects created in heap memory, and investigate techniques for enhancing the immunity to soft errors through various object duplication schemes. The idea is to access the duplicate object when the checksum associated with the primary object indicates an error. We implemented several duplication based schemes and conducted extensive experiments. Our results clearly show that this spectrum of schemes enable us to balance the tradeoffs between error rate and heap space consumption.

REFERENCES

• 1: Alfredo Benso , Silvia Chiusano , Paolo Prinetto , L. Tagliaferri, A C/C++ Source-to-Source Compiler for Dependable Applications, Proceedings of the 2000 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (formerly FTCS-30 and DCCA-8), p.71, June 25-28, 2000
• 2: Chung-Ho Chen , Arun K. Somani, Fault-Containment in Cache Memories for TMR Redundant Processor Systems, IEEE Transactions on Computers, v.48 n.4, p.386-397, April 1999 [doi>10.1109/12.762529]
• 3: D. Chen, A. Messer, P. Bernadat, G. Fu, Z. Dimitrijevic, D. Lie, D. Mannaru, A. Riska, and D. Milojicic, "JVM susceptibility to memory errors," in Proc. JVM'01.
• 4: G. Chen , M. Kandemir , N. Vijaykrishnan , M. J. Irwin , B. Mathiske , M. Wolczko, Heap compression for memory-constrained Java environments, Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programing, systems, languages, and applications, October 26-30, 2003, Anaheim, California, USA
• 5: "CLDC and the K virtual machine (KVM)," http://java.sun.com/products/cldc/.
• 6: Bob Cmelik , David Keppel, Shade: a fast instruction-set simulator for execution profiling, Proceedings of the 1994 ACM SIGMETRICS conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems, p.128-137, May 16-20, 1994, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
• 7: Brian Demsky , Martin Rinard, Automatic detection and repair of errors in data structures, Proceedings of the 18th annual ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programing, systems, languages, and applications, October 26-30, 2003, Anaheim, California, USA
• 8: "J2ME Mobile Information Device Profile," http://java.sun.com/j2me/.
• 9: Richard Jones , Rafael Lins, Garbage collection: algorithms for automatic dynamic memory management, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1996
• 10: Wei-lun Kao , Ravishankar K. Iyer , Dong Tang, FINE: A Fault Injection and Monitoring Environment for Tracing the UNIX System Behavior Under Faults, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.19 n.11, p.1105-1118, November 1993 [doi>10.1109/32.256857]
• 11: Shubhendu S. Mukherjee , Christopher Weaver , Joel Emer , Steven K. Reinhardt , Todd Austin, A Systematic Methodology to Compute the Architectural Vulnerability Factors for a High-Performance Microprocessor, Proceedings of the 36th annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture, p.29, December 03-05, 2003
• 12: Corina S. Pasareanu , Matthew B. Dwyer , Willem Visser, Finding Feasible Counter-examples when Model Checking Abstracted Java Programs, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, p.284-298, April 02-06, 2001
• 13: R. Phelan, "Addressing soft errors in ARM core-based designs," White Paper, ARM Limited, 2003.
• 14: C. Pyyhtia, "Quality issues facing embedded memory," in Proc. Sophia Antipolis Conference on Micro Electronics, 2002.
• 15: Steven K. Reinhardt , Shubhendu S. Mukherjee, Transient fault detection via simultaneous multithreading, Proceedings of the 27th annual international symposium on Computer architecture, p.25-36, June 2000, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• 16: Ran Shaham , Elliot K. Kolodner , Mooly Sagiv, Heap profiling for space-efficient Java, Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2001 conference on Programming language design and implementation, p.104-113, June 2001, Snowbird, Utah, United States
• 17: P. P. Shirvani, N. R. Saxena, and E. J. McCluskey, "Software-implemented EDAC protection against SEUs," IEEE Transactions on Reliablity, 49(3):273--284, 2000.
• 18: Chris Weaver , Todd M. Austin, A Fault Tolerant Approach to Microprocessor Design, Proceedings of the 2001 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (formerly: FTCS), p.411-420, July 01-04, 2001

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.7 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
      B.7.1 Types and Design Styles
          Subjects: Memory technologies

Additional Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.8 Performance and Reliability
      B.8.1 Reliability, Testing, and Fault-Tolerance
      B.8.2 Performance Analysis and Design Aids

  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.3 SPECIAL-PURPOSE AND APPLICATION-BASED SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Real-time and embedded systems

General Terms:
Design, Performance, Reliability