The Effect of Input Data on Program Vulnerability

The System Vulnerability Stack is a novel method to compute a system's vulnerability to transient faults. The vulnerability stack observes that a system consists of multiple independent layers that interact through well-defined interfaces (e.g., the ISA). Therefore, the vulnerability stack quantifies fault masking within an individual layer by focusing on its interfaces: a fault that does not propagate to a layer's interfaces will be masked. These layer-level measurements can then be combined to yield a full-system vulnerability measure. The vulnerability stack can have myriad benefits for architects interested in system vulnerability calculation. For instance, the vulnerability stack isolates hardware-level from software-level fault masking effects.