SafetyNet: Improving the availability of shared memory multiprocessors with global checkpoint/recovery
Journal Article
We develop an availability solution, called SafetyNet, that uses a unified, lightweight checkpoint/recovery mechanism to support multiple long-latency fault detection schemes. At an abstract level, SafetyNet logically maintains multiple, globally consistent checkpoints of the state of a shared memory multiprocessor (i.e., processors, memory, and coherence permissions), and it recovers to a pre-fault checkpoint of the system and re-executes if a fault is detected. SafetyNet efficiently coordinates checkpoints across the system in logical time and uses "logically atomic" coherence transactions to free checkpoints of transient coherence state. SafetyNet minimizes performance overhead by pipelining checkpoint validation with subsequent parallel execution. We illustrate SafetyNet avoiding system crashes due to either dropped coherence messages or the loss of an inter-connection network switch (and its buffered messages). Using full-system simulation of a 16-way multiprocessor running commercial workloads, we find that SafetyNet (a) adds statistically insignificant runtime overhead in the common-case of fault-free execution, and (b) avoids a crash when tolerated faults occur.
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Sorin, DJ; Martin, MMK; Hill, MD; Wood, DA
Published Date
- January 1, 2002
Published In
Start / End Page
- 123 - 134
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0884-7495
Citation Source
- Scopus