Reduced Precision DWC: An Efficient Hardening Strategy for Mixed-Precision Architectures

Duplication with Comparison (DWC) is an effective software-level solution to improve the reliability of computing devices. However, it introduces performance and energy consumption overheads that could be unsuitable for high-performance or real-time safety-critical applications. In this article, we present Reduced-Precision (RP-DWC) as a means lower overhead DWC by executing redundant copy in reduced precision. RP-DWC particularly suitable modern mixed-precision architectures, such NVIDIA GPUs, feature dedicated functional units programmable accuracy. We discuss benefits challenges associated show intrinsic difference between copies allows detecting most, but not all, errors. undetected faults are ones fall into precisions, they produce much smaller impact on application output and, thus, might tolerated. investigate fault detection, performance, Volta GPUs. Through injection beam experiment, using three microbenchmarks four real applications, achieves excellent coverage (up 86 percent) minimal (as low 0.1 percent time 24 overhead).