Real-time, concurrent checkpoint for parallel programs

Abstract

We have developed and implemented a checkpointing and restart algorithm for parallel programs running on commercial uniprocessors and shared-memory multipro cessors. The algorithm runs concurrently with the target program, interrupts the target program for small, fixed amounts of time and is transparent to the checkpointed program and its compiler. The algorithm achieves its efficiency through a novel use of address translation hardware that allows the most time-consuming operations of the checkpoint to be overlapped with the running of the program being checkpointed.