Vital processing system including a vital power controller with

Abstract

The present device, a vital power controller with forgiveness, is a subsystem of a larger vital processing system, the function of the subsystem being to verify the proper operation of the larger system and to provide power to the system outputs only when the larger system functions correctly; the larger system periodically delivers checkword sets to the vital power controller (VPC); the checkwords verify the correct operation of the larger system, a valid checkword set enabling the VPC to generate vital power for a limited time; the forgiveness feature allows the VPC to tolerate an occasional bad checkword set and yet continue to provide vital power if the rate at which bad checkword sets is encountered is below a specified rate, thereby providing improved performance in the presence of noise which tends to produce occasional bad checkwords and which would otherwise cause loss of vital power.