A fault-tolerant multi-transputer system for space applications

Abstract This paper describes a fault-tolerant multi-transputer architecture that is meant to be used as an on-board instrumentation computer in one of the experiments on the Soviet mission to Mars, Mars 94. Fault tolerance is achieved by reconfiguring the array of transputer modules and triggering redundant processes in healthy modules. Reconfiguration and fault isolation is achieved by ‘short-circuiting’ faulty modules. The system is compared to simplex, duplex and TMR systems using reliability and MTTF as parameters and it is found to be a highly reliable system, especially in cases where long missions are considered.