Distributed fault diagnosis in multistage network-based multiprocessors

This paper is concerned with a distributed, system level fault diagnosis scheme for multistage network-based multiprocessors. The target system, which we choose as a representative, employs a multistage interconnection network with 4×4 switching elements. We propose a fast diagnostic method which uses a quadtree and its coupler structure. These two quadtree structures partition the system into a number of link-independent groups. This partitioning provides an important diagnostic property; the communication paths in each link-independent group are either identical or disjoint. Several previous works in fault diagnosis investigated the multistage interconnection network only. This paper presents an entire multiprocessor diagnosis, including the detection and location of single faults caused by processor nodes, switching elements, and communication links. In addition, the diagnosis of a group of multiple faults partitioned by the tree structures is also discussed