cpu_check

NOTE: BETA code, work-in-progress.

CPU torture test designed for SMP systems, attempting to find CPU hardware faults, focusing primarily on the x86_64 architecture.

The basic operation is to:

• Run threads with affinity fixed to each logical CPU.
• Generate a chunk of random data, either dictionary based text, or random binary data.
• Run a number of checksum/hash algorithms over the data, store their results.
• Compress the data via one of (zlib, ...).
• Encrypt the data via AES-256-GCM.
• Copy the data ('rep movsb' on x86, else memcpy).
• Switch affinity to an alternate logical CPU.
• Decrypt.
• Decompress.
• Run checksum/hash algorithms and compare with stored results.

Algorithms are chosen to exercise various hardware extensions. Eg. on x86_64, SSE4.2, AVX, etc.

Prerequisites:

Designed to run under Unix/Linux OS.

• cmake: https://cmake.org/
• zlib
• OpenSSL/BoringSSL

Building

sh$ git clone git@github.com:stixpjr/cpu_check.git
sh$ cd cpu_check
sh$ mkdir build
sh$ cd build
sh$ cmake ..
sh$ make

Options

Some options have been implememented that affect the build, which may be passed to cmake via, eg:

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=(Debug|Release)

• CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=(Release|Debug)
• USE_CLANG=(ON|OFF)
• BUILD_STATIC=(ON|OFF)

TODO:

• Use git submodules for:
  • farmhash: https://github.com/google/farmhash
  • highwayhash: https://github.com/google/highwayhash
  • crc32c: https://github.com/google/crc32c
  • cityhash: https://github.com/google/cityhash
  • brotli: https://github.com/google/brotli
  • gipfeli: https://github.com/google/gipfeli
• Expand encryption coverage - find those algorithms that stress the HW.
• Flags to enable/disable steps, eg. encryption.
• Flags controlling min/max buffer size.
• Use cpuid to dynamically select appropriate instruction set extensions.
• Query ACPI/cpuid for more meaningful CPU identification.
• Extra x86_64 instruction coverage:
  • movnti (SSE2 mov doubleword with non-temporal hint)
  • prefetch*
  • movbe (mov with byte swap)
• Consider floating point tests?
• Keep stats on corruptions (eg. buffer lengths/alignments, detection means (crc32), etc).
• Try to narrow down corruptions automatically.