A Self-Healing Control

In electronic computing machines, where a high degree of availability is a requisite, some form of self-repair is provided. The rational in most such machines is that a given piece of hardware must be backed up by an identical part which may be switched in upon failure of the first. Work in nonreplicative self-repair has chiefly centered about the arithmetic unit and other controlled entities where the solutions, though not trivial, are relatively straightforward. The control portion, however, has consistently been avoided as unmanageable short of replication. 1 This paper describes a technique for what will be called "self-healing" the control of a machine which differs radically from conventional self-repair, and displays potential for considerable economic savings.