Immunotronics: Hardware Fault Tolerance Inspired by the Immune System

A novel approach to hardware fault tolerance is proposed that takes inspiration from the human immune system as a method of fault detection and removal. The immune system has inspired work within the areas of virus protection and pattern recognition yet its application to hardware fault tolerance is untouched. This paper introduces many of the ingenious methods provided by the immune system to provide reliable operation and suggests how such concepts can inspire novel methods of providing fault tolerance in the design of state machine hardware systems. Through a process of self/non-self recognition the proposed hardware immune system will learn to differentiate between acceptable and abnormal states and transitions within the ‘immunised’ system. Potential faults can then be flagged and suitable recovery methods invoked to return the system to a safe state.