Testing soft error rate of an application program
US8296739B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 31, 2008 |
| Grant date | Oct 23, 2012 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Aug 7, 2031 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F11/3668
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Techniques are provided for determining consequences of an injected fault on a system running a given application program or operating system, in order to measure the software impact of a hardware soft error on the application program/operating system. The application program software is emulated instruction-by-instruction, where source operands are randomly modified before an instruction is executed, and destination operands are randomly modified after an instruction is executed, in order to mimic hardware soft errors. In addition, a program counter is randomly modified after execution of a branch instruction. The resulting consequences of such modifications are monitored such that a fault of an instruction being executed is modeled in order to determine a soft error rate (SER) for a software application program or operating system.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.