A Software Methodology for Detecting Hardware Faults in VLIW Data Paths

The proposed methodology aims to achieve processor data paths for VLIW architectures able to autonomously detect transient and permanent hardware faults while executing their ap- plications. The approach, carried out on the compiled application software, provides the introduction of additional instructions for controlling the correctness of the computation with respect to fail- ures in one of the data path functional units. The advantage of a software approach to hardware fault detection is interesting be- cause it allows one to apply it only to the critical applications ex- ecuted on the VLIW architecture, thus not causing a delay in the execution of noncritical tasks. Furthermore, by exploiting the in- trinsic redundancy of this class of architectures no hardware modi- fication is required on the data path so that no processor customiza- tion is necessary.