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Fault Injection into VHDL Models: Experimental Validation of a Fault-Tolerant Microcomputer System

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Dependable Computing — EDCC-3 (EDCC 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1667))

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Abstract

This work presents a campaign of fault injection to validate the dependability of a fault tolerant microcomputer system. The system is duplex with cold stand-by sparing, parity detection and a watchdog timer. The faults have been injected on a chip-level VHDL model, using an injection tool designed with this purpose. We have carried out a set of injection experiments (with 3000 injections each), injecting transient and permanent faults of types stuck-at, open-line and indetermination on both the signals and variables of the system, running a workload. We have analysed the pathology of the propagated errors, measured their latency, and calculated both detection and recovery coverage. We have also studied the influence with the fault duration and fault distribution. For instance, system detection coverage (including non-effective faults) is 98% and the system recovery coverage is 95% for short transient faults (0.1 clock cycles).

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Gil, D., Martínez, R., Busquets, J.V., Baraza, J.C., Gil, P.J. (1999). Fault Injection into VHDL Models: Experimental Validation of a Fault-Tolerant Microcomputer System. In: Hlavička, J., Maehle, E., Pataricza, A. (eds) Dependable Computing — EDCC-3. EDCC 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1667. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48254-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48254-7_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66483-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48254-3

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