On-demand thread-level fault detection in a concurrent programming environment

Abstract

The vulnerability of multi-core processors is increasing due to tighter design margins and greater susceptibility to interference. Moreover, concurrent programming environments are the norm in the exploitation of multi-core systems. In this paper, we present an on-demand thread-level fault detection mechanism for multi-cores. The main contribution is on-demand redundancy, which allows users to set the redundancy scope in the concurrent code. To achieve this we introduce intelligent redundant thread creation and synchronization, which manages concurrency and synchronization between the redundant threads via the master. This framework was implemented in an emulation of a multi-threaded, many-core processor with single, in-order issue cores. It was evaluated by a range of programs in image and signal processing, and encryption. The performance overhead of redundancy is less than 11% for single core execution and is always less than 100% for all scenarios. This efficiency derives from the platform's hardware concurrency management and latency tolerance.