Title :
Nostradamus: Low-cost hardware-only error detection for processor cores
Author :
Nathan, Ralph ; Sorin, Daniel J.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Duke Univ., Durham, NH, USA
Abstract :
We propose a new, low-cost, hardware-only scheme to detect errors in superscalar, out-of-order processor cores. For each instruction decoded, Nostradamus compares what the instruction is expected to do against what the instruction actually does. We implement Nostradamus in RTL on top of a baseline superscalar, out-of-order core, and we experimentally evaluate its ability to detect injected errors. We also evaluate Nostradamus´s area and power overheads.
Keywords :
error detection; integrated circuit testing; microprocessor chips; Nostradamus area evaluation; RTL; low-cost hardware-only error detection scheme; low-cost hardware-only scheme; out-of-order processor cores; power overhead evaluation; Benchmark testing; Hardware; History; Out of order; Pipelines; Registers; Transient analysis;
Conference_Titel :
Design, Automation and Test in Europe Conference and Exhibition (DATE), 2014
Conference_Location :
Dresden
DOI :
10.7873/DATE.2014.173