CAREER: Microarchitecture Considerations for Soft-Error Tolerance in Future Microprocessors

职业生涯：未来微处理器中软错误容错的微体系结构考虑摘要这个项目解决了在未来的深亚微米微处理器实现中增加对软错误的敏感性这一紧迫问题。这项研究开发和评估了三种检测和恢复软错误的候选方法。这三种方法是在超标量处理器中动态重新执行指令，通过高效的交叉检查机制促进在两个镜像处理器核上的冗余执行，以及针对未修改的同时多线程(SMT)处理器或芯片多处理器(CMP)的全软件方法。该研究评估了每种方法的潜力，并分析了它们在性能、故障覆盖率、设计复杂性和实施成本方面的权衡。这项研究的一个目标是克服与这些方法相关的性能和实现惩罚。该项目的一个教学部分应用了可执行和可综合的高级硬件描述形式，以提高课堂讨论的精确度，并使课外独立练习更具洞察力。在专注于性能的几十年之后，软错误可靠性是微处理器设计不断进步的关键挑战之一。这项研究的结果直接关系到价值数十亿美元的微处理器行业，这反过来将影响我们从专业到娱乐的日常体验。这项研究的结果不仅在短期内适用于深亚微米VLSI微处理器，而且还可能扩展到解决诸如量子、分子和纳米技术等新兴技术的可靠性问题。

CAREER: Microarchitecture Considerations for Soft-Error Tolerance in Future MicroprocessorsAbstractThis project addresses the pressing issue of increasing susceptibility to soft errors in future deep-submicron microprocessor implementations. The study develops and evaluates three candidate approaches for detecting and recovering from soft errors. The three approaches are dynamic instruction re-executions in a superscalar processor, redundant executions over two mirrored processor cores facilitated by an efficient crosschecking mechanism, and an all-software approach for unmodified simultaneous multithreading (SMT) processors or chip-multiprocessors (CMP). The study evaluates the potential of each approach and analyzes their trade-off in terms of performance, fault coverage, design complexity and implementation cost. A goal of this research is to overcome the performance and implementation penalties associated with these approaches. An education component of this project applies executable and synthesizable high-level hardware description formalisms to improve the preciseness of in-class discussions and to enable more insightful out-of-class independent exercises.Following decades of exclusive focus on performance, soft-error reliability is one of the key challenges in the continuing advances of microprocessor designs. The results of this research have direct bearing on the multi-billion-dollar microprocessor industry, which in turn will impact our daily experiences from professional to recreational. The results of this research will not only be applicable in the near term to deep-submicron VLSI microprocessors, but may also be extensible to address the reliability of emerging technologies such as quantum, molecular and nano-technologies.