Efficient Soft Error Vulnerability Analysis Using Non-intrusive Fault Injection Techniques

Abstract

Electronic computing systems are integrating modern multicore processors and GPUs aiming to perform complex software stacks in different life-critical systems, including health devices and emerging self-driving cars. Such systems are expected to experience at least one soft error per day in the near future, which may lead to life-threatening failures. To prevent these failures, critical system must be tested and verified while under realistic workloads. This paper presents four novel non-intrusive fault injection techniques that enable full fault injection control and inspection of multicore systems behavior in the presence of faults. Proposed techniques were integrated into a fault injection framework and verified through a real automotive case study with up to 43 billions instructions. Results show that compared to traditional methods, the new techniques can increase the efficiency of fault injection campaigns during early development phase by 32.28%.