Fault-list collapsing for fault-injection experiments

Fault injection is become a popular approach to evaluate and possibly to improve the dependability of computer-based systems. One of the main issues to be solved when setting up a fault injection experiment is the generation of a list of faults to be injected, really representative of the whole set of possible faults. This paper proposes a set of collapsing rules based on the analysis of the assembly code and of the behavior of a fault free run of the system, useful to reduce the fault list length and the fault injection time without decreasing the accuracy of the results. The approach is suitable to be adapted for microprocessor-based systems and is independent on the method used to generate the fault list to be collapsed.

[1]  Daniel P. Siewiorek,et al.  FIAT-fault injection based automated testing environment , 1988, [1988] The Eighteenth International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing. Digest of Papers.

[2]  Jacob A. Abraham,et al.  FERRARI: A Flexible Software-Based Fault and Error Injection System , 1995, IEEE Trans. Computers.

[3]  Johan Karlsson,et al.  Fault injection into VHDL models: the MEFISTO tool , 1994 .

[4]  Ravishankar K. Iyer,et al.  Experimental evaluation , 1995 .

[5]  Ravishankar K. Iyer,et al.  FINE: A Fault Injection and Monitoring Environment for Tracing the UNIX System Behavior under Faults , 1993, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[6]  Daniel P. Siewiorek,et al.  Observations on the Effects of Fault Manifestation as a Function of Workload , 1992, IEEE Trans. Computers.

[7]  Alfredo Benso,et al.  Fault behavior observation of a microprocessor system through a VHDL simulation-based fault injection experiment , 1996, Proceedings EURO-DAC '96. European Design Automation Conference with EURO-VHDL '96 and Exhibition.

[8]  Jean Arlat,et al.  Fault Injection for Dependability Validation: A Methodology and Some Applications , 1990, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[9]  Ravishankar K. Iyer,et al.  Simulation of software behavior under hardware faults , 1993, FTCS-23 The Twenty-Third International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing.

[10]  Volkmar Sieh,et al.  Combining software-implemented and simulation-based fault injection into a single fault injection method , 1995, Twenty-Fifth International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing. Digest of Papers.

[11]  Henrique Madeira,et al.  Experimental evaluation of the fail-silent behavior in computers without error masking , 1994, Proceedings of IEEE 24th International Symposium on Fault- Tolerant Computing.

[12]  Barry W. Johnson,et al.  System Dependability Evaluation via a Fault List Generation Algorithm , 1996, IEEE Trans. Computers.

[13]  Johan Karlsson,et al.  Two software techniques for on-line error detection , 1992, [1992] Digest of Papers. FTCS-22: The Twenty-Second International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing.

[14]  Dhiraj K. Pradhan,et al.  Fault Injection: A Method for Validating Computer-System Dependability , 1995, Computer.