A Simulation-Based Soft Error Estimation Methodology for Computer Systems

This paper proposes a simulation-based soft error esti-mation methodology for computer systems. Accumulating soft error rates (SERs) of all memories in a computer sys-tem results in pessimistic soft error estimation. This is be-cause memory cells are used spatially and temporally and not all soft errors in them make the computer system faulty. Our soft-error estimation methodology considers the loca-tions and the timings of soft errors occurring at every level of memory hierarchy and estimates the soft errors of the whole system using instruction-set simulation. Our experi-ment demonstrates that the reliability of computer systems depends on not only SERs of memories but also the behavior of software running on the systems