An On-line BIST RAM Architecture with Self Repair Capabilities

The emerging field of self-repair computing is expected to have a major impact on deployable systems for space missions and defense applications, where high reliability, availability, and serviceability are needed. In this context, RAM (random access memories) are among the most critical components. This paper proposes a built-in self-repair (BISR) approach for RAM cores. The proposed design, introducing minimal and technology-dependent overheads, can detect and repair a wide range of memory faults including: stuck-at, coupling, and address faults. The test and repair capabilities are used on-line, and are completely transparent to the external user, who can use the memory without any change in the memory-access protocol. Using a fault-injection environment that can emulate the occurrence of faults inside the module, the effectiveness of the proposed architecture in terms of both fault detection and repairing capability was verified. Memories of various sizes have been considered to evaluate the area-overhead introduced by this proposed architectur

Self-repair ability of evolved self-assembling systems in cellular automata

Self-repairing systems are those that are able to reconfigure themselves following disruptions to bring them back into a defined normal state. In this paper we explore the self-repair ability of some cellular automata-like systems, which differ from classical cellular automata by the introduction of a local diffusion process inspired by chemical signalling processes in biological development. The update rules in these systems are evolved using genetic programming to self-assemble towards a target pattern. In particular, we demonstrate that once the update rules have been evolved for self-assembly, many of those update rules also provide a self-repair ability without any additional evolutionary process aimed specifically at self-repair

Exploring the relations between regret, self-agency, and the tendency to repair using experimental methods and structural equation modeling

Previous studies suggest that feelings of regret are elicited by events appraised as goal incongruent and caused by the self, and that they are characterized by a tendency to repair the event. Study 1 investigated whether the appraisal of self-agency increases the tendency to repair. Participants played a game in which goal-congruent and goal-incongruent events were caused by themselves (self-agency) or by a die (circumstances-agency). The tendency to repair was measured via behavior and self-reports. Self-agency increased feelings of regret but not the tendency to repair. Moreover, our data rejected the idea that regret is more than other negative feelings associated with the tendency to repair. Study 2 confirmed the findings of Study 1 using autobiographical recall. Both studies provide support for a relation between self-agency and feelings of regret, but not between self-agency and the tendency to repair, nor between the tendency to repair and feelings of regret

Automatic Software Repair: a Bibliography

This article presents a survey on automatic software repair. Automatic software repair consists of automatically finding a solution to software bugs without human intervention. This article considers all kinds of repairs. First, it discusses behavioral repair where test suites, contracts, models, and crashing inputs are taken as oracle. Second, it discusses state repair, also known as runtime repair or runtime recovery, with techniques such as checkpoint and restart, reconfiguration, and invariant restoration. The uniqueness of this article is that it spans the research communities that contribute to this body of knowledge: software engineering, dependability, operating systems, programming languages, and security. It provides a novel and structured overview of the diversity of bug oracles and repair operators used in the literature

A Self-Repairing Execution Unit for Microprogrammed Processors

Describes a processor which dynamically reconfigures its internal microcode to execute each instruction using only fault-free blocks from the execution unit. Working without redundant or spare computational blocks, this self-repair approach permits a graceful performance degradatio

Agent Based Test and Repair of Distributed Systems

This article demonstrates how to use intelligent agents for testing and repairing a distributed system, whose elements may or may not have embedded BIST (Built-In Self-Test) and BISR (Built-In Self-Repair) facilities. Agents are software modules that perform monitoring, diagnosis and repair of the faults. They form together a society whose members communicate, set goals and solve tasks. An experimental solution is presented, and future developments of the proposed approach are explore