Cyclone I: A self-checking control-oriented multiprocessor

The development of a multi-microprocessor system suitable for the automatic control of a railway locomotive is described. The technique of time redundancy is used to reduce the amount of hardware to a minimum and to provide transient fault detection and error correction. The software controlling input/output is separated from the main application programs and is integral with the error checking system software. In this way, the probability of incorrect outputs is considerably reduced when working in an environment likely to cause transient faults. Finally, a duplex Cyclone arrangement is proposed to meet requirements for single-hard-fault tolerance