Computational Reliability of Raspberry Pi 5 Under Undervoltage and Current Limitation: Detected Computational Errors and Implications for Silent Data Corruption

Abstract

Single-board computers (SBCs) are increasingly being used in embedded and edge computing applications, where power stability can affect computational reliability. This work experimentally characterizes an ARM-based SoC in a Raspberry Pi 5 under controlled voltage and current limitation conditions. An automated system based on programmable power control, real-time monitoring, and stress-ng workloads with verification mechanisms was developed to evaluate system behavior under progressive power limitations. Voltage sweeps were performed with unrestricted current, while current sweeps were conducted at a fixed nominal voltage. During the experiments, operations per second (ops/s), IPC, processor frequency, temperature, cache misses, branch misses, power consumption, throttling events, and undervoltage warnings were monitored. The results showed that voltage and current limitation produced different degradation behaviors. Voltage reduction caused a progressive transition from stable operation to detected computational errors, while current limitation led to an abrupt transition toward instability and boot failure. The Raspberry Pi 5 continued operating with relatively stable IPC and processor frequency while computational errors were detected. These results indicate that conventional performance metrics alone may not be sufficient to evaluate system reliability under unstable power conditions. Temperature also increased as the supply voltage decreased, particularly near conditions where computational errors were detected. This highlights the importance of monitoring computational correctness in SBCs operating under constrained power conditions.