A scalable checkpoint encoding algorithm for diskless checkpointing

Diskless checkpointing is an efficient technique to save the state of a long running application in a distributed environment without relying on stable storage. In this paper, we introduce several scalable encoding strategies into diskless checkpointing and reduce the overhead to survive k failures in p processes from 2[log p].k((β+ 2γ)m + α) to (1 + 0(1/√m)).k{β + 2γ)m, where α is the communication latency, 1/β is the network bandwidth between processes. 1/γ is the rate to perform calculations, and m is the size of local checkpoint per process. The introduced algorithm is scalable in the sense that the overhead to survive k failures in p processes does not increase as the number of processes p increases. We evaluate the performance overhead of the introduced algorithm by using a preconditioned conjugate gradient equation solver as an example. Experimental results demonstrate that the introduced techniques are highly scalable. © 2008 IEEE.