Algorithmic approaches to enhancing and exploiting application-level error tolerance

Sloan, Joseph

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/46706 Copy

Description

Title

Algorithmic approaches to enhancing and exploiting application-level error tolerance

Author(s)

Sloan, Joseph

Issue Date

2014-01-16T17:59:47Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Kumar, Rakesh

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Kumar, Rakesh

Committee Member(s)

• Vaidya, Nitin H.
• Gropp, William D.
• Abraham, Jacob A.
• Bronevetsky, Greg

Department of Study

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Discipline

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Fault Tolerance
• Application-level Error Tolerance
• Algorithmic Based Fault Tolerance (ABFT)
• Application Robustification
• Stochastic Processors
• Reliability and Hardware Variability
• Error localization
• Partial Recomputation
• Robust Sparse Linear Algebra
• Algorithmic Selection for Error Resilience

Abstract

As late-CMOS process scaling leads to increasingly variable circuits/logic and as most post-CMOS technologies in sight appear to have largely stochastic characteristics, hardware reliability has become a first-order design concern. To make matters worse, emerging computing systems are becoming increasingly power constrained. Traditional hardware/software approaches are likely to be impractical for these power constrained systems due to their heavy reliance on redundant, worstcase, and conservative designs. The primary goal of this research has been to investigate how we can leverage inherent application and algorithm characteristics (e.g. natural error resilience, spatial and temporal reuse, and fault containment) to build more efficient robust systems. This dissertation research describes algorithmic approaches that leverage application and algorithm-awareness for building such systems. These approaches include (a) application-specific techniques for low-overhead fault detection, (b) an algorithmic approach for error correction using localization, (c) selection of scientific computing solver schemes to leverage application-level error resilience, and (d) a numerical optimization-based methodology for converting applications into a more error tolerant form. This dissertation shows that application and algorithm-awareness can significantly increase the robustness of computing systems, while also reducing the cost of meeting reliability targets.

Graduation Semester

2013-12

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/46706

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2013 Joseph Augustyn Sloan

Owning Collections