Concerns about the reliability of real-time embedded systems that employ dynamic voltage scaling has recently been highlighted [1,2,3], focusing on transient-fault-tolerance techniques based on time-redundancy. In this paper we analyze the usage of information redundancy in DVS-enabled systems with the aim of improving both the system tolerance to transient faults as well as the energy consumption. We demonstrate through a case study that it is possible to achieve both higher fault-tolerance and less energy using a combination of information and time redundancy when compared with using time redundancy alone. This even holds despite the impact of the information redundancy hardware overhead and its associated switching activities. Categories and Subject Descriptors B.8.1 [Performance and Reliability]: Reliability, Testing, and Fault-Tolerance. C.3 [Special-Purpose and Application-Based Systems]: Real-time and embedded systems. General Terms Performance, Design, Reliability. Keywords Dy...
Alireza Ejlali, Marcus T. Schmitz, Bashir M. Al-Ha