research-article

Crash Skipping: A Minimal-Cost Framework for Efficient Error Recovery in Approximate Computing Environments

Authors:

Yan Verdeja Herms,

Yanjing LiAuthors Info & Claims

GLSVLSI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI

Pages 129 - 134

https://doi.org/10.1145/3299874.3317986

Published: 13 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

We present a lightweight technique to minimize error recovery costs in approximate computing environments. We take advantage of the key observation that if an application crashes in a "non-critical" region of its execution, then skipping the crash and allowing the execution to continue oftentimes results in "acceptable" output, due to the inherent fault-tolerance of approximate applications. By skipping application crashes, the program is given a chance to recover from an error on its own, without expending computing power towards error recovery. The system-level support required to implement our Crash Skipping technique imposes negligible overhead. Experimental results from representative approximate applications demonstrate that our technique is effective, resulting in successful error recovery for 56% of application crash cases on average, with a maximum recovery rate of 81%. By combining our technique with application restart, we obtain ~33% improvement in performance/energy consumption compared to recovering from crashes by restarting alone. This benefit is comparable to what can be achieved using aggressive checkpointing techniques, but without the significant costs in system design and complexity that such techniques impose.

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Cited By

Damsgaard HOmetov ANurmi J(2022)Approximation Opportunities in Edge Computing Hardware: A Systematic Literature ReviewACM Computing Surveys10.1145/3572772Online publication date: 23-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1145/3572772
Fabrício Filho JFelzmann IWanner L(2021)Transparent Resilience for Approximate DRAMArchitecture of Computing Systems10.1007/978-3-030-81682-7_3(35-50)Online publication date: 7-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-81682-7_3

Index Terms

Crash Skipping: A Minimal-Cost Framework for Efficient Error Recovery in Approximate Computing Environments
1. Hardware
  1. Robustness
    1. Fault tolerance
    2. Hardware reliability

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cover image ACM Conferences

GLSVLSI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI

May 2019

562 pages

ISBN:9781450362528

DOI:10.1145/3299874

General Chairs:
Houman Homayoun
George Mason University, USA
,
Baris Taskin
Drexel University, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Tinoosh Mohsenin
UMBC, USA
,
Weisheng Zhao
Beihang University, China

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

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Published: 13 May 2019

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GLSVLSI '19: Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI 2019

May 9 - 11, 2019

VA, Tysons Corner, USA

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Cited By

Damsgaard HOmetov ANurmi J(2022)Approximation Opportunities in Edge Computing Hardware: A Systematic Literature ReviewACM Computing Surveys10.1145/3572772Online publication date: 23-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1145/3572772
Fabrício Filho JFelzmann IWanner L(2021)Transparent Resilience for Approximate DRAMArchitecture of Computing Systems10.1007/978-3-030-81682-7_3(35-50)Online publication date: 7-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-81682-7_3

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