Argus: Low-Cost, Comprehensive Error Detection in Simple Cores

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Abstract

We have developed Argus, a novel approach for providing low-cost, comprehensive error detection for simple cores. The key to Argus is that the operation of a von Neumann core consists of four fundamental tasks - control flow, dataflow, computation, and memory access - that can be checked separately. We prove that Argus can detect any error by observing whether any of these tasks are performed incorrectly. We describe a prototype implementation, Argus-1, based on a single-issue, 4-stage, in-order processor to illustrate the potential of our approach. Experiments show that Argus-1 detects transient and permanent errors in simple cores with much lower impact on performance (<4% average overhead) and chip area (<17% overhead) than previous techniques.

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