SafeLS: Toward Building a Lockstep NOEL-V Core

TL;DR

This paper discusses extending the Gaisler RISC-V NOEL-V core with lockstep technology to enhance safety in critical systems by preventing common cause failures due to hardware errors.

Contribution

It introduces a lockstep implementation for the NOEL-V core and explores its potential applications and distribution in safety-critical systems.

Findings

Extended NOEL-V core with lockstep implemented

Potential for improved fault detection in safety-critical systems

Future prospects for distribution and use discussed

Abstract

Safety-critical systems such as those in automotive, avionics and space, require appropriate safety measures to avoid silent data corruption upon random hardware errors such as those caused by radiation and other types of electromagnetic interference. Those safety measures must be able to prevent faults from causing the so-called common cause failures (CCFs), which occur when a fault produces identical errors in redundant elements so that comparison fails to detect the errors and a failure arises. The usual solution to avoid CCFs in CPU cores is using lockstep cores, so that two cores execute the same flow of instructions, but with some time staggering so that their state is never identical and faults can only lead to different errors, which are then detectable by means of comparison. This paper extends Gaisler's RISC-V NOEL-V core with lockstep; and presents future prospects for its use and distribution.