Fault tolerance in super-scalar and VLIW processors

In this paper, we present a method for utilizing the spare capacity in super-scalar and very long instruction word (VLIW) processors to tolerate functional unit failures. Unlike previous work that was primarily interested in detection of transient faults, we are concerned with more permanent and/or intermittent faults which necessitate processor reconfiguration. Our method utilizes the VLIW compiler or the superscalar scheduler to insert redundant operations whenever idle functional units exist. The results of these redundant operations are used to detect and diagnose functional unit failures. For super-scalar processors, the scheduler can then utilize this information to ensure that operations are performed only on non-faulty units. In VLIW processors, this is equivalent to recompiling the code to run on the remaining non-faulty functional units. Since in certain applications, recompilation may not be possible, we consider two alternative reconfiguration strategies for VLIW processors. These strategies sacrifice storage space and execution time, respectively, in order to reconfigure without recompiling. We present Markov models that describe the behavior of processors using these different approaches and we evaluate their reliabilities. The results show that, while super-scalar and VLIW with recompilation provide the highest reliability, all proposed strategies significantly increase reliability over that of an unprotected processor

Efficient diagnosis of multiprocessor systems under probabilistic models

The problem of fault diagnosis in multiprocessor systems is considered under a probabilistic fault model. The focus is on minimizing the number of tests that must be conducted in order to correctly diagnose the state of every processor in the system with high probability. A diagnosis algorithm that can correctly diagnose the state of every processor with probability approaching one in a class of systems performing slightly greater than a linear number of tests is presented. A nearly matching lower bound on the number of tests required to achieve correct diagnosis in arbitrary systems is also proven. Lower and upper bounds on the number of tests required for regular systems are also presented. A class of regular systems which includes hypercubes is shown to be correctly diagnosable with high probability. In all cases, the number of tests required under this probabilistic model is shown to be significantly less than under a bounded-size fault set model. Because the number of tests that must be conducted is a measure of the diagnosis overhead, these results represent a dramatic improvement in the performance of system-level diagnosis techniques

Multilevel distributed diagnosis and the design of a distributed network fault detection system based on the SNMP protocol.

In this thesis, we propose a new distributed diagnosis algorithm using the multilevel paradigm. This algorithm is a generalization of both the ADSD and Hi-ADSD algorithms. We present all details of the design and implementation of this multilevel adaptive distributed diagnosis algorithm called the ML-ADSD algorithm. We also present extensive simulation results comparing the performance of these three algorithms.In 1967, Preparata, Metze and Chien proposed a model and a framework for diagnosing faulty processors in a multiprocessor system. To exploit the inherent parallelism available in a multiprocessor system and thereby improving fault tolerance, Kuhl and Reddy, in 1980, pioneered a new area of research known as distributed system level diagnosis. Following this pioneering work, in 1991, Bianchini and Buskens proposed an adaptive distributed algorithm to diagnose fully connected networks. This algorithm called the ADSD algorithm has a diagnosis latency of O(N) testing rounds for a network with N nodes. With a view to improving the diagnosis latency of the ADSD algorithm, in 1998 Duarte and Nanya proposed a hierarchical distributed diagnosis algorithm for fully connected networks. This algorithm called the Hi-ADSD algorithm has a diagnosis latency of O(log2N) testing rounds. The Hi-ADSD algorithm can be viewed as a generalization of the ADSD algorithm.In all cases, the time required by the ML-ADSD algorithm is better than or the same as for the Hi-ADSD algorithm. The performance of the ML-ADSD algorithm can be improved by an appropriate choice of the number of clusters and the number of levels. Also, the ML-ADSD algorithm is scalable in the sense that only some minor modifications will be required to adapt the algorithm to networks of varying sizes. This property is not shared by the Hi-ADSD algorithm. The primary application of our research is to develop and implement a prototype network fault detection/monitoring system by integrating the ML-ADSD algorithm into a SNMP-based (Simple Network Management Protocol) fault management system. We report the details of the design and implementation of such a distributed network fault detection system

Creation and maintenance of a communication tree in wireless sensor networks

A local reconfiguration algorithm (INP) for reliable routing in wireless sensor networks that consist of many static (fixed) energy-constrained nodes is introduced in the dissertation. For routing around crash fault nodes, a communication tree structure connecting sensor nodes to the base station (sink or root) is dynamically reconfigured during information dissemination. Unlike other location based routing approaches, INP does not take any support from a high costing system that gives position information such as GPS. For reconfigurations, INP uses only local relational information in the tree structure among nearby nodes by collaboration between the nodes that does not need global maintenance, so that INP is energy efficient and it scales to large sensor networks. The performance of the algorithm is compared to the single path with repair routing scheme (SWR) that uses a global metric and the modified GRAdient broadcast scheme (GRAB-F) that uses interleaving multiple paths by computation and by simulations. The comparisons demonstrate that using local relative information is mostly enough for reconfigurations, and it consumes less energy and mostly better delivery rates than other algorithms especially in dense environments. For the control observer to know the network health status, two new diagnosis algorithms (Repre and Local) that deal with crash faults for wireless sensor networks are also introduced in the dissertation. The control observer knows not only the static faults found by periodic testing but also the dynamic faults found by a path reconfiguration algorithm like INP that is invoked from evidence during information dissemination. With based on this information, the control observer properly treats the network without lateness. Local algorithm is introduced for providing scalability to reduce communication energy consumption when the network size grows. The performance of these algorithms is computationally compared with other crash faults identification algorithm (WSNDiag). The comparisons demonstrate that maintaining the communication tree with local reconfigurations in Repre and Local needs less energy than making a tree per each diagnosis procedure in WSNDiag. They also demonstrate that providing scalability in Local needs less energy than other approaches

Estratégias eficientes para identificação de falhas utilizando o diagnóstico baseado em comparações

Orientador: Prof. Dr. Elias Procópio Duarte Jr.Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Exatas, Curso de Pós-Graduaçao em Informática. Defesa: Curitiba, 12/04/2013Bibliografia: fls. 126-148Resumo: O diagnóstico baseado em comparações e uma forma realista para detectar falhas em hardware, software, redes e sistemas distribuídos. O diagnostico se baseia na comparaçao de resultados de tarefas produzidos por pares de unidades para determinar quais sao as unidades falhas e sem-falha do sistema. Qualquer diferenca no resultado da comparacao indica que uma ou ambas as unidades estao falhas. O diagnostico completo do sistema e baseado no resultado de todas as comparações. Este trabalho apresenta um novo algoritmo de diagnostico para identificar falhas em sistemas de topologia arbitraria com base no modelo MM*. A complexidade do algoritmo proposto e O(t2AN) no pior caso para sistemas de N unidades, onde t denota o numero maximo permitido de unidades falhas e A e o grau da unidade de maior grau no sistema. Esta complexidade e significativamente menor que a dos outros algoritmos previamente publicados. Alem da especificacao do algoritmo e das provas de correcão, resultados obtidos atraves da execucao exaustiva de experimentos sao apresentados, mostrando o desempenho me dio do algoritmo para diferentes sistemas. Al em do novo algoritmo para sistemas de topologia arbitraria, este trabalho tambem apresenta duas outras solucoes para deteccão e combate a poluicao de conteudo, ou alteracoes nao autorizadas, em transmissões de mídia contínua ao vivo em redes P2P - a primeira e uma solucão centralizada e que realiza o diagnostico da poluicao na rede, e a segunda e uma solucao completamente distribuída e descentralizada que tem o objetivo de combater a propagacao da poluicao na rede. Ambas as solucoes utilizam o diagnostico baseado em comparacoes para detectar alterações no conteudo dos dados transmitidos. As soluções foram implementadas no Fireflies, um protocolo escalavel para redes overlay, e diversos experimentos atraves de simulacao foram conduzidos. Os resultados mostram que ambas as estrategias sao solucães viaveis para identificar e combater a poluiçcãao de conteudo em transmissãoes ao vivo e que adicionam baixa sobrecarga ao trafego da rede. Em particular a estrategia de combate a poluicao foi capaz de reduzir consideravelmente a poluicão de conteudo em diversas configurações, em varios casos chegando a elimina-la no decorrer das transmissoães.Abstract: Comparison-based diagnosis is a practical approach to detect faults in hardware, software, and network-based systems. Diagnosis is based on the comparison of task outputs returned by pairs of system units in order to determine whether those units are faulty or fault-free. If the comparison results in a mismatch then one ore both units are faulty. System diagnosis is based on the complete set of all comparison results. This work introduces a novel diagnosis algorithm to identify faults in t-diagnosable systems of arbitrary topology under the MM* model. The complexity of the proposed algorithm is O(t2AN) in the worst case for systems with N units, where t denotes the maximum number of faulty units allowed and A corresponds to the maximum degree of a unit in the system. This complexity is significantly lower than those of previously published algorithms. Besides the algorithm specification and correctness proofs, exhaustive simulations results are presented, showing the typical performance of the algorithm for different systems. Moreover, this work also presents two different strategies to detect and fight content pollution in P2P live streaming transmissions - the first strategy is centralized and performs the diagnosis of content pollution in the network, and the second strategy is a completely distributed solution to combat the propagation of the pollution. Both strategies employ comparison-based diagnosis in order to detect any modification in the data transmitted. The solutions were also implemented in Fireflies, a scalable and fault-tolerant overlay network protocol, and a large number of simulation experiments were conduced. Results show that both strategies are feasible solutions to identify and fight content pollution in live streaming sessions and that they add low overhead in terms of network bandwidth usage. In particular, the solution proposed to combat content pollution was able to significantly reduce the pollution over the system in diverse network configurations - in many cases the solution nearly eliminated the pollution during the transmission

A computing structure for data acquisition in high energy physics

A review of the development of parallel computing ispresented, followed by a summary of currently recognised typesof parallel computer and a brief summary of some applicationsof parallel computing in the field of high energy physics.The computing requirement at the data acquisition stageof a particular set of high energy physics experiments isdetailed, with reference to the computing system currently inuse. The requirement for a parallel processor to process thedata from these experiments is established and a possiblecomputing structure put forward.The topology proposed consists of a set of rings ofprocessors stacked to give a cylindrical arrangement, ananalytical approach is used to verify the suitability andextensibility of the suggested scheme. Using simulationresults the behaviour of rings and cylinders of processorsusing different algorithms for the movement of data within thesystem and different patterns of data input is presented anddiscussed.Practical hardware and software details for processingequipment capable of supporting such a structure as presentedhere is given, various algorithms for use with this equipment,e. g. program distribution, are developed and the software forthe implementation of the cylindrical structure is presented.Appendices of constructional information and all programlistings are included