Predictive reliability and fault management in exascale systems: State of the art and perspectives

Abstract

Performance and power constraints come together with Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor technology scaling in future Exascale systems. Technology scaling makes each individual transistor more prone to faults and, due to the exponential increase in the number of devices per chip, to higher system fault rates. Consequently, High-performance Computing (HPC) systems need to integrate prediction, detection, and recovery mechanisms to cope with faults efficiently. This article reviews fault detection, fault prediction, and recovery techniques in HPC systems, from electronics to system level. We analyze their strengths and limitations. Finally, we identify the promising paths to meet the reliability levels of Exascale systems.This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 (H2020) research and innovation program under the FET-HPC Grant Agreement No. 801137 (RECIPE). Jaume Abella was also partially supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain under Contract No. TIN2015-65316-P and under Ramon y Cajal Postdoctoral Fellowship No. RYC-2013-14717, as well as by the HiPEAC Network of Excellence. Ramon Canal is partially supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya under Contract No. 2017SGR0962.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft