Estimating Error-probability and its Application for Optimizing Roll-back Recovery with Checkpointing

The probability for errors to occur in electronic systems is not known in advance, but depends on many factors including influence from the environment where the system operates. In this paper, it is demonstrated that inaccurate estimates of the error probability lead to loss of performance in a well known fault tolerance technique, Roll-back Recovery with checkpointing (RRC). To regain the lost performance, a method for estimating the error probability along with an adjustment technique are proposed. Using a simulator tool that has been developed to enable experimentation, the proposed method is evaluated and the results show that the proposed method provides useful estimates of the error probability leading to near-optimal performance of the RRC fault-tolerant technique.