Process Introspection: A Checkpoint Mechanism for High Performance Heterogeneous Distributed Systems
Adam J. Ferrari · 1996
The Process Introspection project is a design and implementation effort, the main goal of which is to construct a general purpose, flexible, efficient checkpoint/restart mechanism appropriate for use in high performance heterogeneous distributed systems. This checkpoint/restart mechanism has the primary constraint that it must be platform independent; that is, checkpoints produced on one architecture or operating system platform must be restartable on a different architecture or operating system platform. The Process Introspection mechanism is based on a design pattern for constructing interoperable checkpointable modules. Application of the design pattern is automated by two levels of software tools: a library of support routines that facilitate the use of the design pattern, and a source code translator that automatically applies the pattern to platform independent modules. A prototype implementation of library has been constructed and used to demonstrate that the design pattern can be applied effectively to construct platform independent checkpointable programs that operate efficiently.