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Application-Level Fault Tolerance as a Complement to System-Level Fault Tolerance

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Abstract

As multiprocessor systems become more complex, their reliability will need to increase as well. In this paper we propose a novel technique which is applicable to a wide variety of distributed real-time systems, especially those exhibiting data parallelism. System-level fault tolerance involves reliability techniques incorporated within the system hardware and software whereas application-level fault tolerance involves reliability techniques incorporated within the application software. We assert that, for high reliability, a combination of system-level fault tolerance and application-level fault tolerance works best. In many systems, application-level fault tolerance can be used to bridge the gap when system-level fault tolerance alone does not provide the required reliability. We exemplify this with the RTHT target tracking benchmark and the ABF beamforming benchmark.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003

    Joshua Haines

  2. Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003

    Vijay Lakamraju

  3. Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003

    Israel Koren

  4. Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003

    C. Mani Krishna

Authors
  1. Joshua Haines
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  2. Vijay Lakamraju
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  3. Israel Koren
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  4. C. Mani Krishna
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Haines, J., Lakamraju, V., Koren, I. et al. Application-Level Fault Tolerance as a Complement to System-Level Fault Tolerance. The Journal of Supercomputing 16, 53–68 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008181429693

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008181429693

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