SafetyNet: improving the availability of shared memory multiprocessors with global checkpoint/recovery

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, 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 interconnection network switch. Using a full-system simulation of a 16-way multiprocessor running commercial workloads, we find that SafetyNet: 1) adds statistically insignificant runtime overhead in the common-case of fault-free execution, and 2) avoids a crash when tolerated faults occur.