A virtual memory translation mechanism to support checkpoint and rollback recovery
Nicholas S. Bowen, Dhiraj K. Pradhan · 1991
Checkpointand Tollback Tecovery is a technique that allows a system to io~eTate a faihwe by pe?'iodically saving the eniipe siaie and if an emoT OCCUTS, Toliing back to the prioT checkpoint.This technique zs paTticulady suited to applications with long execution times such as those typically found m supercomputer environments.This paper presents a technique that embeds the support for checkpoint and Tollback recovery dmect~y into the virtual memory translation hardware.The scheme is general enough to be implemented on various scopes oj data such as a portion of an address spacej a single address space OT multiple address spaces.A basic model is developed which measures the amount of work required by the scheme as a function of the checkpoint internal szze.Using this model the degree to which the overhead decTeases as the interval size increases is shown. 1 As mentioned, both copies need not always exist but at least must be retreatable.For example, to tolerate to program failure one could save only the active set, plus a record of *Work performed while on leave at the University of Mas.sachuset ts on Ph.D. studies.