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运行在很大程度上受到高性能目标的驱动。然而，随着半导体器件的大规模集成接近其物理极限，能效和稳健性最近已被提升为一流的设计约束。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对能源效率提出了要求，这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，积极的电源管理技术可以显著增加计算机系统对瞬时故障(软错误)的脆弱性，这些故障会导致运行时的错误操作。对于必须在严格的时间和能量约束下在高可靠性水平下正确运行的实时嵌入式系统来说，这些问题更加突出。最近，一些开创性的可靠性感知电源管理方案被提出，旨在缓解流行的动态电压和频率调节的负面影响。该项目正在解决现有解决方案的保守性问题，并制定一个更普遍的框架。具体地说，该项目正在设计新的解决方案，通过使用共享恢复任务来实现任意可靠性水平。此外，研究还将该框架扩展到多处理器和新兴的多核平台。该项目有两个主要的更广泛的影响层面：第一，能源意识对环境、经济和整个社会都有直接影响。其次，通过将可靠性提升到首要目标，该项目将有助于防止安全关键计算机系统的故障，并保护财产和生命安全。

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.