A software-level Redundant MultiThreading for Soft/Hard Error Detection and Recovery

In this work, we investigate the potential of software-only RMT (Redundant MultiThreading) schemes for soft and hard error detection and recovery. We first implement and evaluate the error protection capability of basic software level triple redundant multithreading (STRMT) and analyze its vulnerability. Then we introduce FISHER (FlexIble Soft and Hard Error Resiliency) as a software RMT scheme which can achieve high degree of error resiliency and does not suffer from STRMT vulnerability holes. FISHER executes three threads and rather than having a centralized voting mechanism, it distributes and intertwines error detection and recovery operations between redundant threads. We performed 135,000 soft/hard error injection experiments on different hardware components of an ARM cortex53-like μ-architecturally simulated microprocessor. The results demonstrate that FISHER can reduce programs failure rate by around 42× and 26× compared to original and basic STRMT-protected versions of programs, respectively.