Fault-Tolerant Iterative Methods via Selective Reliability

Current iterative methods for solving linear equations assume reliability of data (no “bit flips”) and arithmetic (correct up to rounding error). If faults occur, the solver usually either aborts, or computes the wrong answer without indication. System reliability guarantees consume energy or reduces performance. As processor counts continue to grow, these costs will become unbearable. Instead, we show that if the system lets applications apply reliability selectively, we can develop iterations that compute the right answer despite faults. These “fault-tolerant” methods either converge eventually, at a rate that degrades gracefully with increased fault rate, or return a clear failure indication in the rare case that they cannot converge. If faults are infrequent, these algorithms spend most of their time in unreliable mode. This can save energy, improve performance, and avoid restarting from checkpoints. We illustrate convergence for a sample algorithm, Fault-Tolerant GMRES, for representative test problems and fault rates.