Lifetime-aware load distribution policies in multi-core systems: An in-depth analysis

Dynamic Reliability Management solutions are often adopted in multi-core systems to mitigate aging and wear-out effects, by opportunely distributing the workload on the available cores. The efficiency of such solutions is generally evaluated by considering only the occurrence of the first core failure due to the computational complexity. In this paper we propose an in-depth analysis of such approaches by considering the occurrence of multiple subsequent core failures, thus offering a more precise estimation of the lifetime reliability. In particular, we analyzed two classical load distribution approaches: a load balancing strategy versus a strategy based on spare resources. Experimental results show benefits and limitations of the considered solutions in terms of lifetime reliability while fulfilling system performance.