Hardware fault tolerance: an immunological solution

Since the advent of computers, numerous approaches have been taken to create hardware systems that provide a high degree of reliability even in the presence of errors. This paper addresses the problem from a biological perspective using the human immune system as a source of inspiration. The immune system uses many ingenious methods to provide reliable operation in the body and so may suggest how similar methods can be used in the future design of reliable computer systems. The paper addresses this challenge through the implementation of an immunised finite state machine-based counter. The proposed methods demonstrate how through a process of self/non-self-differentiation, the hardware immune system creates a set of tolerance conditions to monitor the change in states of the hardware. Potential faults may then be flagged, assessed and the appropriate recovery action taken