COMPILER-ASSISTED FULL CHECKPOINTING

This paper describes a compiler-based approach to checkpointing for pr ocess recovery. The implementation is transparent to both the programm er and the hardware. The compiler-generated sparse potential checkpoin t code maintains the desired checkpoint interval. Adaptive checkpointi ng reduces the size of the checkpoints. Training is used to select low -cost, high-coverage potential checkpoints. The problem of selecting p otential checkpoints is shown to be NP-complete, and a heuristic algor ithm is introduced that determines a quick suboptimal solution. These compiler-assisted checkpointing techniques have been implemented in a modified version of the GNU C (GCC) compiler. Experiments involving th e modified version of the GCC compiler on a Sun SPARC workstation are summarized.