Engineer’s Talk: Soft-Errors with Michal Lewczyk – MES017

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Soft-Errors

Do you have ever heard about Soft-Errors? No, I do not mean Software-Errors. That’s something completely different. I mean Soft in difference to Hard. I first time get into contact with Soft-Errors in late 2011 as we have observed a spontaneous reset within a customer’s appliance. There was no indication for a reset-request, the system simply resetted.

Within some industries this is no case to be worried about. But in that time, in that type of industry, with this particular customer it was a challenge to find the root-cause of this spontaneous reset. And it was even more complicated to approve this root-cause.

In this episode it is Michal Lewczyk joining us. Michal is one of the very seldom specialists available for Soft-Errors. Michal was one of my colleagues in 2011 and the years after. He was the main investigator for all Soft-Error issues we suspected.

Michal has a deep knowledge in bare metal SW-programming. He’s mainly engaged into developing software for Digital Signal Processors; thus he’s not only an elaborated and experienced software-engineer, but also a great investigator and marvelous bug-hunter.

Let’s enjoy the engineer’s talk with Michal Lewczyk about one of the most quirky phenomenon in Embedded Systems.

Essential Answers Provided In This Episode For:

• What are Soft-Errors? What induces Soft-Errors?
• How to treat Soft-Errors gracefully?
• What equipment do you need to approve a Soft-Error?
• Why you need at least one engineer to be aware of Soft-Errors?
• You do not know assembler? Here are the main reasons you should become familiar with it.
• How to distinguish Soft-Errors from regular seldom errors?
• How to take care of your boss’s mind if you explain Soft-Errors to him?
• What might cause an increase of Soft-Errors?
• Why you should not blame that easily for a Soft-Error?
• What is Michal’s first step guide for treating Soft-Errors?
• And much much more

Selected Links and Resources From This Episode

• Soft Error (Wikipedia)
• Soft Errors in Electronic Memory – A White Paper
• Soft errors’ impact on system reliability
• DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study (Google Research)

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