Einrichtung zur Überwachung eines Rechnersystems mit zwei Prozessoren in einem Kraftfahrzeug

摘要

The invention is directed to an arrangement for monitoring a computer system with two processors in a motor vehicle. The arrangement provides that the two processors monitor each other to the same extent and that this monitoring occurs in the form of a hand-shake operation in the context of a cyclical data exchange between both processors. In this connection, it is especially advantageous that both processors: can operate fully independently of each other; need not utilize a directly coupled or common I/O-bus; and, are mutually asynchronously operable with different clock frequencies. The arrangement provides a mutual monitoring of two processors to the same extent so that a failure can be localized when it occurs. In this way, the arrangement can distinguish whether a processor has failed or whether an error is present in the peripheral hardware of the processors. For this purpose, the above-mentioned cyclical data exchange between both processors is utilized as an acknowledgement path for the monitoring function.