S~3 DES - Scalable Software Support for Dependable Embedded Systems

摘要

Scalable Software Support, for Dependable Embedded Systems (S~3 DES) achieves fault tolerance by utilizing spatial software-based triple modular redundancy for computational and voter processes on application level. Due to the parallel execution of the replicas on distinct CPU cores it makes a step towards software-based fault tolerance against transient and permanent random hardware errors. Additionally, the compliance with real-time requirements in terms of response time is enhanced compared to similar approaches. The replicated voters, the introduced mutual voter monitoring and the optimized arithmetic encoding allow the detection and compensation of voter failures without the utilization of backward recovery. Fault injection experiments on real hardware reveal that S~3 DES can detect and mask all injected data and program flow errors under a single fault assumption, whereas an uncoded voting scheme yields approx. 12% silent data corruptions in a similar experiment.