AN-Encoding Compiler: Building Safety-Critical Systems with Commodity Hardware

Research output: Contribution to conferencesPaperContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

In the future, we expect commodity hardware to be used
in safety-critical applications. However, in the future commodity hard-
ware is expected to become less reliable and more susceptible to soft er-
rors because of decreasing feature size and reduced power supply. Thus,
software-implemented approaches to deal with unreliable hardware will
be needed. To simplify the handling of value failures, we provide fail-
ure virtualization in the sense that we transform arbitrary value failures
caused by erroneous execution into fail-stop failures. The latter ones are
easier to handle. Therefore, we use the arithmetic AN-code because it
provides very good error detection capabilities. Arithmetic codes are suit-
able for the protection of commodity hardware because guarantees can
be provided independent of the executing hardware. This paper presents
the encoding compiler EC-AN which applies AN-encoding to arbitrary
programs. According to our knowledge, this is the first in software imple-
mented complete AN-encoding. Former encoding compilers either encode
only small parts of applications or trade-off safety to enable complete
AN-encoding.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages283-296
Number of pages14
Publication statusPublished - 2009
Peer-reviewedYes

Conference

TitleSAFECOMP '09 - the 28th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security
Abbreviated titleSAFECOMP '09
Conference number
Duration15 September 2009
Degree of recognitionInternational event
Location
CityHamburg
CountryGermany

External IDs

Scopus 70350434509

Keywords

Research priority areas of TU Dresden

DFG Classification of Subject Areas according to Review Boards

Keywords

  • Soft error, Arithmethic code, Commodity Hardware, Dynamic Binary Instrumentation, Decrease Feature Size