Data Flow Analysis of Software Executed by Unreliable Hardware

The data flow is a crucial part of software execution in recent applications. It depends on the concrete implementation of the realized algorithm and it influences the correctness of a result in case of hardware faults during the calculation. In logical circuits, like arithmetic operations in a processor system, arbitrary faults become a more tremendous aspect in future. With modern manufacturing processes, the probability of such faults will increase and the result of a software´s data flow will be more vulnerable. This paper shows a principle evaluation method for the reliability of a software´s data flow with arbitrary soft errors also with the concept of fault compensation. This evaluation is discussed by means of a simple example based on an addition.