A Software-Implemented Configurable Control Flow Checking Method

Abstract

In space radiation environment, a large number of cosmic ray often results in transient faults on on-board computer. These transient faults lead to data flow errors or control flow errors during program running. For the control flow errors caused by transient faults, this paper proposes a control flow checking method based on classifying basic blocks CFCCB. CFCCB firstly classifies the basic blocks based on the control flow graph that has been inserted the abstract blocks. CFCCB then designs formatted signatures for the basic blocks and inserts the instructions for comparing and update signatures into every basic block for the purpose of checking the control flow errors that are inter-blocks, intra-blocks or inter-procedures. Compared to existing algorithms, CFCCB not only has high label express ability, but also can be configured flexibly. The fault injection experiment results of CFCCB and other similar algorithms have shown that, the average fail rate of programs with CFCCB has decreased to 19.9% at the cost of increasing the executing time by 34% and increasing the memory overhead by 41.5% in average. CFCCB has lower performance and memory overhead, and has highest reliability among the similar algorithms.