14688474
A processor for testing mixed-signal cores in system-on-chip
This paper describes the design of a processor specific for testing cores embedded in system-on-chip. This processor, which can be implemented within a system's reconfigurable area, shall be responsible for scheduling and control test operations and perform preliminary data processing, as well as to provide the interface with an external tester. Building these test operations on-chip allows for simplifying external tester interface and to reduce testing time. The testing procedure and the infrastructure required to test an A/D converter is described as an example.
37612228
An approach to testability improvement of mixed-signal boards
The increasing complexity of mixed-signal boards makes an integrated analogue/digital testability approach an attractive proposition. This paper investigates one such approach based on the use of mixed-signal test support ICs together with standard board level test infrastructures. The architecture of a test support IC and preliminary experimental results are also presented.<<ETX>>
34569680
Can Software Implemented Fault-Injection Be Used on Real-Time Systems?
Software Implemented Fault Injection (SWIFI) is a well-established technique for fault injection, but with a significant drawback for Real-Time Systems: intrusiveness, also known as "probe effect". In fact, for most fault models, additional code has to be run on the same processor that executes the application. The danger lies in some deadlines being missed as a consequence of that overhead. 
 
This paper identifies the sources of intrusiveness, and discusses the procedures to measure it. The question of what level of intrusiveness can be considered acceptable is also addressed. 
 
A Pentium version of an existing SWIFI tool (Xception), developed with no real-time considerations in mind, was tested on a system composed by off-the-shelf (COTS) components (a standard PC with a Pentium processor and a commercial real-time multitasking kernel). Data collected using this platform shows that the intrusiveness can be quite significant. 
 
A technique called "Routine Specialization" is proposed to lower that overhead. Results obtained from a "real-time-oriented" injector (RT-Xception) taken from the same system, show a very significant improvement. A comparison with data from other authors shows that with this change SWIFI becomes a viable technique for a wide range of real-time applications.
17769088
NSIS-Based Quality of Service and Resource Allocation in Ethernet Networks
The definition of the IEEE 802.1Q and IEEE 802.1p standards provided Class of Service (CoS) capabilities to Ethernet networks and, consequently, allowed new QoS services to be deployed. This is used by the Subnet Bandwidth Management (SBM) protocol, an RSVP-based protocol that provides IntServ-like services at Ethernet level. This paper proposes an alternative way to quality of service provision and resource allocation in Ethernet networks, based on the emerging IETF NSIS framework. The proposed approach was validated as a proof of concept by simulation, showing the ability of NSIS to provide QoS differentiation in Ethernet scenarios.
35428904
Portable checkpointing and recovery
This paper presents a checkpointing scheme that was implemented in a parallel library that runs on top of CHIMP/MPI. The main goals of the checkpointing mechanism are portability and efficiency. It runs on every platform supported by MPI in a machine-independent way. The scheme allows the migration of checkpoints and offers a flexible recovery mechanism based on data-reconfiguration. Some performance results will be presented at the end of the paper together with some techniques that can be used to increase the efficiency of the checkpointing mechanism.
31082095
Fault-Detection by Result-Checking for the Eigenproblem
This paper proposes a new fault detection mechanism for the computation of eigenvalues and eigenvectors, the so called eigenproblem, for which no such scheme existed before, to the best of our knowledge. It consists of a number of assertions that can be executed on the results of the computation to determine their correctness. The proposed scheme follows the Result Checking principle, since it does not depend on the particular numerical algorithm used. It can handle both real and complex matrices, symmetric or not. Many practical issues are handled, like rounding errors and eigenvalue ordering, and a practical implementation was built on top of unmodified routines of the well-known LAPACK library. The proposed scheme is simultaneously very efficient, with less than 2% performance overhead for medium to large matrices, very effective, since it exhibited a fault coverage greater than 99.7% with a confidence level of 99%, when subjected to extensive fault-injection experiments, and very easy to adapt to other libraries of mathematical routines besides LAPACK.
1093169
An Embedded Language Approach to Router Specification in Curry
The development of modern routers require a significant effort to be designed, built, and verified. While hardware routers are faster, they are difficult to configure and maintain. Software routers, on the other hand, are slower but much more flexible, easier to configure and maintain, less expensive, etc. Recently, a modular architecture and toolkit for building software routers and other packet processors has been introduced: the Click system. It includes a specification language with features for declaring and connecting router elements and for designing abstractions.