Scalable High Performance Computing Using Autonomous Agents

During previous work, Intelligent Automation Incorporated (IAI) has demonstrated the feasibility of a design aid for the design and implementation of built-in on-line self-test and diagnosis of electronic systems. With this technology, Navy systems could include integral components which perform built in on-line test and diagnosis, and which display (on the board itself) either a good indication, or display the most likely failed component or group of components. The results of this development will be more accurate and lower cost diagnosis of faulty Navy systems. We have named our system the Microelectronics Display (MIDIS) Design System because using our approach, each printed circuit card or similar aggregation of components will have an on-board display of its status, including a specific identification of failed components or groups of components. Despite the initial success of our preliminary work, there is a great deal of work still required to validate our approach in more general cases than we have done thus far, and to extend the MIDIS Design System to a fully functional system. The current MIDIS Design System does not handle transient or intermittent errors. We believe that the theory and framework of the MIDIS Design System are more than adequate to support this capability, but a great deal of research and development is still required. Since there are far more cases of transient and intermittent error that hard errors, and since these types of errors are often very difficult to diagnose, this capability of MIDIS is particularly important. Our preliminary experimental system handles only the simplest signal types and although the results are encouraging, under the work herein proposed we will expand these signal types sufficiently to provide a more valid proof of concept. Many other enhancements and extensions to the current "toy" system are required before we have a fully usable product.