KINDRED: Heterogeneous Split-Lock Architecture for Safe Autonomous Machines

KINDRED: Heterogeneous Split-Lock Architecture for Safe Autonomous Machines

연구 분야: Verification

학회: ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization, Volume 22, Issue 1

With the increasing practicality of autonomous vehicles and drones, the importance of reliability requirements has escalated substantially. In many instances, traditional system designs tend to overlook reliability issues, emphasizing primarily on performance constraints. However, certain designers may opt for a lock-step (redundant) system design, duplicating every component, which in turn can result in significant performance, energy, and cost overheads. In software for autonomous machines, such as self-driving vehicles, performance degradation can increase reaction time, posing safety risks and reducing mission success rates. This article introduces a novel multi-domain lock-step system design, Kindred, which places a strong emphasis on maximizing reliability while minimizing performance overhead. The proposed approach capitalizes on the inherent diversity in fault tolerance among various tasks within autonomous machine software, intelligently scheduling only the vulnerable nodes in the lock-domain. The primary challenge addressed in this study involves the intelligent task scheduling across different domains, complemented by efficient error detection and correction in the lock-domain. In a real system demonstration, we illustrate the effectiveness of Kindred, showcasing its ability to attain the same level of reliability as a full lock-step system while incurring only a mere 2.8% overhead, as opposed to a fully split system, indicating the advantages and potential of our multi-domain lock-step system design in achieving high reliability without compromising performance.