research-article

Quantitative Analysis of Control Flow Checking Mechanisms for Soft Errors

Authors:

Aviral Shrivastava,

Abhishek Rhisheekesan,

Reiley Jeyapaul,

Carole-Jean WuAuthors Info & Claims

DAC '14: Proceedings of the 51st Annual Design Automation Conference

Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/2593069.2593195

Published: 01 June 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Control Flow Checking (CFC) based techniques have gained a reputation of providing effective, yet low-overhead protection from soft errors. The basic idea is that if the control flow -- or the sequence of instructions that are executed -- is correct, then most probably the execution of the program is correct. Although researchers claim the effectiveness of the proposed CFC techniques, we argue that their evaluation has been inadequate and can even be wrong! Recently, the metric of vulnerability has been proposed to quantify the susceptibility of computation to soft errors. Laced with this comprehensive metric, we quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of several existing CFC schemes, and obtain surprising results. Our results show that existing CFC techniques are not only ineffective in protecting computation from soft errors, but that they incur additional power and performance overheads. Software-only CFC protection schemes (CFCSS [14], CFCSS+NA [2], and CEDA [18]) increase system vulnerability by 18% to 21% with 17% to 38% performance overhead; Hybrid CFC protection technique, CFEDC [4] also increases the vulnerability by 5%; While the vulnerability remains almost the same for hardware only CFC protection technique, CFCET [15], they cause overheads of design cost, area, and power due to the hardware modifications required for their implementations.

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Cited By

Didehban MSo HGali PShrivastava ALee K(2024)Generic Soft Error Data and Control Flow Error Detection by Instruction DuplicationIEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2023.324584221:1(78-92)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2023.3245842
So HKo YJung JLee KShrivastava A(2023)gemV-tool: A Comprehensive Soft Error Reliability Estimation Tool for Design Space ExplorationElectronics10.3390/electronics1222457312:22(4573)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12224573
Ko YBradbury ABurgstaller BMullins RGrosser TLee K(2022)Trace-and-brace (TAB): bespoke software countermeasures against soft errorsProceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED International Conference on Languages, Compilers, and Tools for Embedded Systems10.1145/3519941.3535070(73-85)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3519941.3535070
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Quantitative Analysis of Control Flow Checking Mechanisms for Soft Errors
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cover image ACM Other conferences

DAC '14: Proceedings of the 51st Annual Design Automation Conference

June 2014

1249 pages

ISBN:9781450327305

DOI:10.1145/2593069

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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EDAC: Electronic Design Automation Consortium
SIGBED: ACM Special Interest Group on Embedded Systems
SIGDA: ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation
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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 01 June 2014

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DAC '14

DAC '14: The 51st Annual Design Automation Conference 2014

June 1 - 5, 2014

CA, San Francisco, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,770 of 5,499 submissions, 32%

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Cited By

Didehban MSo HGali PShrivastava ALee K(2024)Generic Soft Error Data and Control Flow Error Detection by Instruction DuplicationIEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2023.324584221:1(78-92)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TDSC.2023.3245842
So HKo YJung JLee KShrivastava A(2023)gemV-tool: A Comprehensive Soft Error Reliability Estimation Tool for Design Space ExplorationElectronics10.3390/electronics1222457312:22(4573)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12224573
Ko YBradbury ABurgstaller BMullins RGrosser TLee K(2022)Trace-and-brace (TAB): bespoke software countermeasures against soft errorsProceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED International Conference on Languages, Compilers, and Tools for Embedded Systems10.1145/3519941.3535070(73-85)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3519941.3535070
Dar GNatale GKeren O(2022)Nonlinear Code-Based Low-Overhead Fine-Grained Control Flow CheckingIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2021.305713271:3(658-669)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2021.3057132
So HDidehban MKo YJeyapaul RKim JKim YLee KShrivastava A(2021)Revisiting Symptom-Based Fault Tolerant Techniques against Soft ErrorsElectronics10.3390/electronics1023302810:23(3028)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10233028
Ko Y(2021)An Ultra-Low-Cost Soft Error Protection Scheme Based on the Selection of Critical VariablesElectronics10.3390/electronics1017210110:17(2101)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10172101
James BWirthlin MGoeders J(2021)Investigating How Software Characteristics Impact the Effectiveness of Automated Software Fault ToleranceIEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science10.1109/TNS.2021.307325968:5(1014-1022)Online publication date: May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNS.2021.3073259
Zhang ZPark SMahlke SXue JJung C(2020)Path Sensitive Signatures for Control Flow Error DetectionThe 21st ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED Conference on Languages, Compilers, and Tools for Embedded Systems10.1145/3372799.3394360(62-73)Online publication date: 16-Jun-2020
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James BQuinn HWirthlin MGoeders J(2020)Applying Compiler-Automated Software Fault Tolerance to Multiple Processor PlatformsIEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science10.1109/TNS.2019.295997567:1(321-327)Online publication date: Jan-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNS.2019.2959975
Hoppe ABecker JKastensmidt F(2020)Fine Grained Control Flow Checking with Dedicated FPGA Monitors2020 IEEE 33rd International System-on-Chip Conference (SOCC)10.1109/SOCC49529.2020.9524751(219-224)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/SOCC49529.2020.9524751
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