SoK: A Survey on Redundant Execution Technology

Abstract

Redundant execution technology is one of the effective ways to improve the safety and reliability of computer systems. By rationally configuring redundant resources, adding components with the same function, using the determined redundant execution logic to coordinate and efficiently execute synchronously can effectively ensure high availability of the machine and system. Fault-tolerant is based on redundant execution, which is the primary method of dealing with system hardware failures. Recently, multi-threading redundancy has realized the continuous development of fault-tolerant technology, which makes the processing granularity of the system tolerate random failure factors gradually reduced. At the same time, intrusion tolerant technology has also been continuously developed with the emergence of multi-variant execution technology. It mainly uses the idea of dynamic heterogeneous redundancy to construct a set of variants with equivalent functions and different structures to complete the detection and processing of threats outside the system. We summarize the critical technologies of redundant execution to achieve fault tolerance and intrusion tolerance in recent years, sorts out the role of redundant execution in the development process from fault tolerance technology to intrusion tolerance technology, classify redundant execution technologies at different levels, finally point out the development prospects of redundant execution technology in multiple application fields and future technical research directions.