CE-Based Optimization for Real-time System Availability under Learned Soft Error Rate

Liying Li, Tongquan Wei, Junlong Zhou, Mingsong Chen, Xiaobo Sharon Hu

Abstract: As the density of integrated circuits continues to increase, the possibility that real-time systems suffer from transient and permanent failures rises significantly, resulting in a degraded availability of system functionality. In this paper, we investigate the dynamic modeling of transient failure rate based on Back Propagation (BP) neural network, and propose an optimization strategy for system availability based on Cross Entropy (CE). Specifically, the neural network is trained using cross-layer simulation data obtained from SPICE simulation while the CE-based optimization for system functionality availability is achieved by judiciously selecting an optimal supply voltage for processors under timing constraints. Simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve system availability improvement of up to 32% compared to benchmarking methods.