CSR: Small: Collaborative Research: Generalized Reliability-Aware Power Management for Real-Time Embedded Systems

几十年来，计算机系统的设计和操作在很大程度上是由高性能目标驱动的。然而，随着半导体器件的大规模集成接近其物理极限，能源效率和稳健性最近被提升为一流的设计约束。能源效率是由小型、便携式和电池供电的计算机的出现以及不断增加的功率密度所强制要求的，这甚至对连接到电网的计算机也提出了严格的限制。此外，最近的研究表明，激进的电源管理技术可能会显著增加计算机系统对瞬态故障（软错误）的脆弱性，从而导致运行时的错误操作。对于实时嵌入式系统来说，这些问题更加明显，因为实时嵌入式系统必须在严格的时间和能量限制下以高可靠性水平正确运行。近年来，许多开创性的可靠性感知电源管理方案被提出，旨在减轻流行的动态电压和频率缩放的负面影响。该项目正在解决现有解决方案的保守性问题，并开发一个更通用的框架。具体来说，该项目正在设计新颖的解决方案，通过使用共享恢复任务来实现任意级别的可靠性。此外，研究还将该框架扩展到多处理器和新兴的多核平台。该项目有两个更广泛的主要影响方面：首先，能源意识对环境、经济和整个社会有直接影响。其次，通过将可靠性提升到一级目标，该项目将有助于防止对安全至关重要的计算机系统出现故障，并保护财产和人类生命。

For decades, computer system design and operation were driven largely by high performance objectives. Yet, as the large scale integration of semi-conductor devices is approaching its physical limits, energy efficiency and robustness have been recently promoted to first-class design constraints. Energy efficiency is mandated by the emergence of small foot-print, portable, and battery-powered computers as well as ever-increasing power density that puts stringent constraints even on computers connected to the power grid. Moreover, recent research has revealed that aggressive power management techniques can significantly increase vulnerabilities of computer systems to transient faults (soft errors) that can cause incorrect operations at run-time. These problems are even more pronounced for real-time embedded systems that must perform correctly at high reliability levels, under strict timing and energy constraints.In recent past, a number of pioneering reliability-aware power management schemes were proposed that aim at mitigating the negative effects of the popular dynamic voltage and frequency scaling. This project is addressing the conservatism of the existing solutions and developing a more general framework. Specifically, the project is devising novel solutions to achieve arbitrary reliability levels through the use of shared recovery tasks. In addition, the research is extending the framework to multiprocessor and emerging multicore platforms. The project has two major broader impact dimensions: First, energy-awareness has a direct impact on environment, economy, and society at large. Second, by promoting reliability to a first-order objective, the project will help to prevent malfunctions in safety-critical computer systems and protect property and human lives.