Designing Networks-on-Chip for High Assurance Real-Time Systems

Conventional fault-tolerance approaches for Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) cannot be applied to high assurance real-time systems due to their different goals and constraints. These systems impose strict integrity, resilience and real-time requirements. All possible effects of hardware errors must be taken into account and the resulting system must be predictable, even in the presence of errors. In this paper, we present a wormhole-switched NoC with virtual channels for high assurance real-time systems hardened against soft errors. All possible duration and impacts of soft errors are taken into account and the resulting NoC operates with formal guarantees. Experimental evaluation shows that the network is able to provide a predictable behavior even in aggressive environments with very high error rates.