Reliability-Aware Design Optimization for Multiprocessor Embedded Systems

This paper presents an approach for the reliability-aware design optimization of real-time systems on multi-processor platforms. The optimization is based on an extension of well accepted fault- and process-models. We combine utilization of hardware replication and software re-execution techniques to tolerate transient faults. A System Fault Tree (SFT) analysis is proposed, which computes the system-level reliability in presence of the hardware and software redundancy based on component failure probabilities. We integrate the SFT analysis with a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) based optimization process to perform efficient reliability-aware design space exploration. The solution resulting from our optimization contains the mapping of tasks to processing elements (PEs), the exact task and message schedule and the fault-tolerance policy assignment. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated using several case studies.