Soft error injection methodology based on QEMU software platform

Author

de Aguiar Geissler, Filipe ; Lima Kastensmidt, Fernanda ; Pereira Souza, Jose Eduardo

Author_Institution

Inst. de Inf. - PGMICRO, Univ. Fed. do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil

fYear

2014

fDate

12-15 March 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

5

Abstract

Fault tolerance techniques implemented at software level have been widely studied as an approach to improve reliability in processor-based systems. This paper presents a fault injection software-based methodology to emulate soft errors in processors running operational systems. The proposed method aims to accelerate the analysis of complex systems under soft errors in order to assist the development of fault tolerance mechanisms. In order to validate the proposed methodology, a simulator was implemented based on QEMU software. QEMU emulates a large number of well-known microprocessor architectures with a full system composed by memory and I/O devices. A case-study for an operational system - the Real Time Operating System (RTEMS) - running in X86 architecture was designed in the QEMU platform and faults were injected. Results show the susceptibility of the registers to faults and can guide designers in the fault tolerance techniques implemented at software level.

Keywords

input-output programs; microprocessor chips; operating systems (computers); public domain software; radiation hardening (electronics); real-time systems; software architecture; software fault tolerance; software reliability; terminal emulation; I/O devices; QEMU software; RTEMS; X86 architecture; complex systems; fault injection software-based methodology; fault tolerance technique; memory device; microprocessor architecture; operational system; processor-based system; real time operating system; register; reliability; soft error emulation; soft error injection methodology; software level; Clocks; Computational modeling; Conferences; Decision support systems; Handheld computers; Microelectronics; Software testing; Fault Injection; Fault Modeling; QEMU; Simulator; Software Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Test Workshop - LATW, 2014 15th Latin American

Conference_Location

Fortaleza

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/LATW.2014.6841910

Filename

6841910