Improving GPU register file reliability with a comprehensive ISA extension

Abstract This work proposes a comprehensive ISA extension to improve GPU reliability to transient effects. Three additional instructions are proposed, implemented, and combined with software-based datapath duplication. Modified program codes are compared to state-of-the-art software-based fault tolerance techniques in terms of execution time. The circuit area is evaluated against the original GPU architecture, and a fault injection campaign is performed to assess reliability. Results show that this comprehensive ISA extension improves performance and fault detection capabilities of software-based approaches at negligible costs in terms of circuit area. This work can help engineers in designing more efficient and resilient GPU architectures.