Effects of transient gate-level faults on program behavior

Abstract

Effects of gate-level faults on program behavior are described and used as a basis for fault models at the program level. A simulation model of the IBM RT PC was developed and injected with 18900 gate-level transient faults. A comparison of the system state of good and faulted runs was made to observe internal propagation of errors, while memory traffic and program flow comparisons detected errors in program behavior. Results show several distinct classes of program-level error behavior, including program flow changes, incorrect memory bus traffic, and undetected but corrupted program state. Additionally, the dependencies of fault location, injection time, and workload on error detection coverage are reported. For the IBM RT PC, the error detection latency was shown to follow a Weibull distribution dependent on the error detection mechanism and the two selected workloads. These results aid in the understanding of the effects of gate-level faults and allow for the generation and validation of new fault models, fault injection methods, and error detection mechanisms.<>