Reliability Analysis for Unreliable FSM Computations

Abstract

Finite State Machines (FSMs) are fundamental in both hardware design and software development. However, the reliability of FSM computations remains poorly understood. Existing reliability analyses are mainly designed for generic computations and are unaware of the special error tolerance characteristics in FSM computations. This work introduces RelyFSM -- a state-level reliability analysis framework for FSM computations. By modeling the behaviors of unreliable FSM executions and qualitatively reasoning about the transition structures, RelyFSM can precisely capture the inherent error tolerance in FSM computations. Our evaluation with real-world FSM benchmarks confirms both the accuracy and efficiency of RelyFSM.