Algorithm-Based Fault Tolerance for Numerical Subroutines

A software library implements a new methodology of detecting faults in numerical subroutines, thus enabling application programs that contain the subroutines to recover transparently from single-event upsets. The software library in question is fault-detecting middleware that is wrapped around the numericalsubroutines. Conventional serial versions (based on LAPACK and FFTW) and a parallel version (based on ScaLAPACK) exist. The source code of the application program that contains the numerical subroutines is not modified, and the middleware is transparent to the user. The methodology used is a type of algorithm- based fault tolerance (ABFT). In ABFT, a checksum is computed before a computation and compared with the checksum of the computational result; an error is declared if the difference between the checksums exceeds some threshold. Novel normalization methods are used in the checksum comparison to ensure correct fault detections independent of algorithm inputs. In tests of this software reported in the peer-reviewed literature, this library was shown to enable detection of 99.9 percent of significant faults while generating no false alarms

Real-time Earthquake Location Using Kirchhoff Reconstruction

Real-time location of earthquakes can be achieved by using direct imaging of the recorded wave field based on a Kirchhoff reconstruction method similar to that used in the migration of seismic reflection data. The standard method of event location requires the wave arrival at each sensor to be picked and associated with an event. By using direct imaging, the event is identified once in the imaged wave field. The computation is independent of the level of seismic activity and can be carried out on a typical desktop computer. The procedure has been successfully demonstrated in two and three dimensions using data from the Southern California Seismic Network (Trinet). At higher resolutions, the reconstruction method can identify finite source effects. Further work considers extending the method by implementing full elastic theory and solving for moment tensors at all locations in the mesh

Injecting Artificial Memory Errors Into a Running Computer Program

Single-event upsets (SEUs) or bitflips are computer memory errors caused by radiation. BITFLIPS (Basic Instrumentation Tool for Fault Localized Injection of Probabilistic SEUs) is a computer program that deliberately injects SEUs into another computer program, while the latter is running, for the purpose of evaluating the fault tolerance of that program. BITFLIPS was written as a plug-in extension of the open-source Valgrind debugging and profiling software. BITFLIPS can inject SEUs into any program that can be run on the Linux operating system, without needing to modify the program s source code. Further, if access to the original program source code is available, BITFLIPS offers fine-grained control over exactly when and which areas of memory (as specified via program variables) will be subjected to SEUs. The rate of injection of SEUs is controlled by specifying either a fault probability or a fault rate based on memory size and radiation exposure time, in units of SEUs per byte per second. BITFLIPS can also log each SEU that it injects and, if program source code is available, report the magnitude of effect of the SEU on a floating-point value or other program variable

A parallel Schur method for solving continuous-time algebraic Riccati equations

Numerical algorithms for solving the continuous-time algebraic Riccati matrix equation on a distributed memory parallel computer are considered. In particular, it is shown that the Schur method, based on computing the stable invariant subspace of a Hamiltonian matrix, can be parallelized in an efficient and scalable way. Our implementation employs the state-of-the-art library ScaLAPACK as well as recently developed parallel methods for reordering the eigenvalues in a real Schur form. Some experimental results are presented, confirming the scalability of our implementation and comparing it with an existing implementation of the matrix sign iteration from the PLiCOC library

A Novel Parallel QR Algorithm For Hybrid Distributed Memory HPC Systems

A novel variant of the parallel QR algorithm for solving dense nonsymmetric eigenvalue problems on hybrid distributed high performance computing systems is presented. For this purpose, we introduce the concept of multiwindow bulge chain chasing and parallelize aggressive early deflation. The multiwindow approach ensures that most computations when chasing chains of bulges are performed in level 3 BLAS operations, while the aim of aggressive early deflation is to speed up the convergence of the QR algorithm. Mixed MPI-OpenMP coding techniques are utilized for porting the codes to distributed memory platforms with multithreaded nodes, such as multicore processors. Numerous numerical experiments confirm the superior performance of our parallel QR algorithm in comparison with the existing ScaLAPACK code, leading to an implementation that is one to two orders of magnitude faster for sufficiently large problems, including a number of examples from applications

Reordering the eigenvalues of a periodic matrix pair with applications in control

Reordering the eigenvalues of a periodic matrix pair is a computational task that arises from various applications related to discrete-time periodic descriptor systems, such as pole placement or linear-quadratic optimal control. However, it is also implicitly present in recently developed robust control methods for linear time-invariant systems. In this contribution, a direct algorithm for performing this task based on the solution of a periodic generalized Sylvester equation is proposed. The new approach is numerically backward stable and it is demonstrated that the resulting deflating subspaces can be much more accurate than those computed by collapsing methods