Watchdog Processors in Parallel Systems

A watchdog processor (WDP) is a relatively simple coprocessor built for concurrent, information compaction based error detection in the main program control flow.A new algorithm called SEIS (Signature Encoded Instruction Stream) is presented for assigning signatures to high level-instructions. The main idea of this method is to embed the information necessary to the program flow check into the signatures themselves, thus avoiding large reference databases in the WDP and allowing high operational speed. Solutions for a fault-tolerant multiprocessing and multitasking implementation are described as well.