Checkpointing Routines

[thejim]

Does anybody know what are Checkpointing Routines and what is their
role in fault tolerant computing?

[Walter Roberson]

In article <11*********************@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups. com>,
thejim <pa************@hotmail.com> wrote:

Does anybody know what are Checkpointing Routines and what is their
role in fault tolerant computing?

That is not a C question; I would suggest that you would get
a better answer in a newsgroup such as comp.programming .

As an approximation:

To checkpoint a computation is to save enough of its state so that
if you had to, you could take the saved information and pick up
where you left off.

If there is a hardware problem during a computation, or if you run out
of memory and are able to restore into less memory, then if you
checkpoint your computation regularily, you can tolerate (smoothly
deal with) the problem; if you do not take these kind of precautions,
then you would have to start back at the beginning again, which
might be completely unacceptable (e.g., you wouldn't want to
issue the same paycheque twice...)
--
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath
been already of old time, which was before us. -- Ecclesiastes

[Default User]

thejim wrote:

Does anybody know what are Checkpointing Routines and what is their
role in fault tolerant computing?

Sounds just like the homework questions I'd get in an Operating Systems
class. The goal is for YOU to figure it out.

Brian

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