SoftArch: An Architecture Level Tool for Modeling and Analyzing Soft Errors

  • Authors:
  • Affiliations:
  • Venue:
  • DSN '05 Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Soft errors are a growing concern for processor reliability. Recent work has motivated architecture-level studies of soft errors since the architecture can mask many raw errors and architectural solutions can exploit workload knowledge. This paper proposes a model and tool, called SoftArch,to enable analysis of soft errors at the architecture-level in modern processors. SoftArch is based on a probabilistic model of the error generation and propagation process in a processor. Compared to prior architecture-level tools, SoftArch is more comprehensive or faster. We demonstrate the use of SoftArch for an out-of-order superscalar processor running SPEC2000 benchmarks. Our results are consistent with, but more comprehensive than, prior work, and motivate selective and dynamic architecture-level soft error protection mechanisms.