Title: Application source code modification for processor architecture lifetime improvement

Authors: Montassar Ben Saad; Ahmed Jedidi; Smail Niar; Mohamed Abid

Addresses: National School of Engineering, University of Sfax, Sfax 3038, Tunisia ' College of Engineering, Ahlia University, Bahrain; National School of Engineering, University of Sfax, Tunisia ' LAMIH, University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambrésis, 59300 Valenciennes, France ' National School of Engineering, University of Sfax, Sfax 3038, Tunisia

Abstract: In the optimal functioning of SoCs, two significant metrics of quality are the most important; lifetime and reliability. The context of this paper focuses on methods to increase the lifetime of a processor. Two methods are presented: relax point injection (RPI) and code structure adaptation (CSA). In RPI, a specific treatment is incorporated into the application code to prevent a harmful rise in the temperature of the chip. The MTTF of the processor is increased by 33.88% through means of an RPI method. However, the execution time of the application is sometimes increased by the RPI to a higher than 12%. In CSA method, the arrangement of the application code is regulated to improve the lifetime of the processor. The MTTF of the processor is increased up to 28% by CSA technique and the implementation time is maintained.

Keywords: mean time to failure; thermal dissipation; relax point injection; code structure adaptation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJES.2019.098289

International Journal of Embedded Systems, 2019 Vol.11 No.2, pp.125 - 138

Received: 15 Jun 2016
Accepted: 06 Feb 2017
Published online: 13 Mar 2019 *

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