Abstract
A fail-silent node is a self-checking node that either functions correctly or stops functioning after an internal failure is detected. Such a node can be constructed from a number of conventional processors. In a software-implemented fail-silent node, the non-faulty processors of the node need to execute message order and comparison protocols to 'keep in step' and check each other respectively. In this paper the design and implementation of efficient protocols for a two processor fail-silent node are described in detail. The performance figures obtained indicate that in a wide class of applications requiring a high degree of fault-tolerance, software-implemented fail-silent nodes constructed simply by utilising standard 'off-the-shelf' components are an attractive alternative to their hardware-implemented counterparts that do require special-purpose hardware components, such as fault-tolerant clocks, comparator and bus interface circuits.
Implementing Fail-Silent Nodes for Distributed Systems
IEEE Transactions on Computers Vol. 45, Issue 11, pp 1226-1238
IEEE Computer Society, 1996 ISSN 0018-9340
[Abstract]