CLEVER: Cross-layer error verification, evaluation and reporting

The continuously progressing technology scaling is not only the source for increasing performance and complexity of embedded systems, but also the reason for rising reliability concerns of the underlying hardware. Consequently, numerous techniques emerged in recent years to mitigate wide range of error causes. Single layer methods, though, proved to be limited in providing an effective and efficient way to address errors in the system perspective. This paper proposes the new technology Cross-Layer Error Verification, Evaluation and Reporting (CLEVER), which is capable of gathering errors and system information on different levels of abstraction to evaluate the remaining useful lifetime of the system and its current state. Thus, CLEVER permits to overcome errors due to time-dependable and abrupt deterioration effects in complex embedded systems with a reasonable overhead. The presented system architecture was designed using a system description language and integrated in a simulation platform. Simulation results indicate the feasibility of this technology.