Fault-Tolerant Design of the IBM Power6 Microprocessor

Abstract

The IBM Power6 microprocessor extends the capabilities of the Power5, dramatically increasing its ability to recover from hard and soft errors without increasing system downtime. The Power6 adds new mainframe-like features for enhanced reliability, availability, and serviceability, including instruction retry and processor failover. Optimized for performance and power, the Power6 implements these RAS enhancements without compromising ultrahigh-frequency operation.