A new adjudicator for fault tolerant software applications correctly resulting in multiple solutions

摘要

The creation of a decision mechanism that can handle Multiple Correct Results (MCR) (resulting from causes other than finite-precision arithmetic) has primarily been an unexplored research area. The lack of means to handle and/or avoid the MCR problem is one of the limiting factors in the practical and effective use of N-Version Programming (NVP) and other software fault tolerance techniques. MCR can occur as the result of the Consistent Comparison Problem (CCP), the use of finite-precision arithmetic (FPA), or in applications that correctly result in multiple solutions. This paper presents the results of research and development of adjudicators for the detection of, and selection among or handling of, MCR. Specifically, this paper focuses on a subset of that research, that is, providing an adjudication function for those applications that correctly result in multiple solutions.