Compiler-directed selective data protection against soft errors

Soft errors in electronic devices are a growing concern for many embedded systems from diverse domains. Chip vendors are already working with system customers on ways to guard against the effects of soft errors. While error code based protection mechanisms for memories such as ECC are important, indiscriminately applying them to all data can have serious memory space and energy overheads. This paper demonstrates how an optimizing compiler can be useful in deciding which data elements need to be protected based on user-specified annotations. The proposed idea makes use of a variant of forward slicing.