Communications of the ACM
The Computer That Never Crashes
A new "systemic" computer is self-repairing, so it never will have to face the feared "Blue Screen of Death."
Credit: Microsoft
University College London (UCL) researchers have created a "systemic" computer, a self-repairing device that could keep mission-critical systems working.
The computer comes with data that is combined with instructions on what to do with it. Each system has a memory containing context-sensitive data, which means it can only interact with other, similar systems. "The pool of systems interact in parallel, and randomly, and the result of a computation simply emerges from those interactions," says UCL's Peter Bentley.
The systemic computer contains several copies of its instructions distributed across its many systems, so if one system is compromised the computer can access another copy to repair its own code.
In addition, the systemic computer continues to operate even if one system crashes because each system carries its own memory.
From New Scientist
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