A recoverable distributed shared memory integrating coherence and recoverability

Abstract

Large-scale distributed systems are very attractive for the execution of parallel applications requiring a huge computing power. However, their high probability of site failure is unacceptable, especially for long time running applications. In this paper, we address this problem and propose a checkpointing mechanism relying on a recoverable distributed shared memory (DSM) in order to tolerate single node failures. Although most recoverable DSMs require specific hardware to store recovery data, our scheme uses standard memories to store both current and recovery data. Moreover, the management of recovery data is merged with the management of current data by extending the DSM's coherence protocol. This approach takes advantage of the data replication provided by a DSM in order to limit the amount of transferred pages during the checkpointing. The paper also presents an implementation and a preliminary performance evaluation of our recoverable DSM on a 56-node Intel Paragon.<>