7,075 research outputs found
Algorithmic Based Fault Tolerance Applied to High Performance Computing
We present a new approach to fault tolerance for High Performance Computing
system. Our approach is based on a careful adaptation of the Algorithmic Based
Fault Tolerance technique (Huang and Abraham, 1984) to the need of parallel
distributed computation. We obtain a strongly scalable mechanism for fault
tolerance. We can also detect and correct errors (bit-flip) on the fly of a
computation. To assess the viability of our approach, we have developed a fault
tolerant matrix-matrix multiplication subroutine and we propose some models to
predict its running time. Our parallel fault-tolerant matrix-matrix
multiplication scores 1.4 TFLOPS on 484 processors (cluster jacquard.nersc.gov)
and returns a correct result while one process failure has happened. This
represents 65% of the machine peak efficiency and less than 12% overhead with
respect to the fastest failure-free implementation. We predict (and have
observed) that, as we increase the processor count, the overhead of the fault
tolerance drops significantly
Practical issues for the implementation of survivability and recovery techniques in optical networks
Flexible Rollback Recovery in Dynamic Heterogeneous Grid Computing
Abstract—Large applications executing on Grid or cluster architectures consisting of hundreds or thousands of computational nodes create problems with respect to reliability. The source of the problems are node failures and the need for dynamic configuration over extensive runtime. This paper presents two fault-tolerance mechanisms called Theft-Induced Checkpointing and Systematic Event Logging. These are transparent protocols capable of overcoming problems associated with both benign faults, i.e., crash faults, and node or subnet volatility. Specifically, the protocols base the state of the execution on a dataflow graph, allowing for efficient recovery in dynamic heterogeneous systems as well as multithreaded applications. By allowing recovery even under different numbers of processors, the approaches are especially suitable for applications with a need for adaptive or reactionary configuration control. The low-cost protocols offer the capability of controlling or bounding the overhead. A formal cost model is presented, followed by an experimental evaluation. It is shown that the overhead of the protocol is very small, and the maximum work lost by a crashed process is small and bounded. Index Terms—Grid computing, rollback recovery, checkpointing, event logging. Ç
Real Time Global Tests of the ALICE High Level Trigger Data Transport Framework
The High Level Trigger (HLT) system of the ALICE experiment is an online
event filter and trigger system designed for input bandwidths of up to 25 GB/s
at event rates of up to 1 kHz. The system is designed as a scalable PC cluster,
implementing several hundred nodes. The transport of data in the system is
handled by an object-oriented data flow framework operating on the basis of the
publisher-subscriber principle, being designed fully pipelined with lowest
processing overhead and communication latency in the cluster. In this paper, we
report the latest measurements where this framework has been operated on five
different sites over a global north-south link extending more than 10,000 km,
processing a ``real-time'' data flow.Comment: 8 pages 4 figure
Checkpointing of parallel applications in a Grid environment
The Grid environment is generic, heterogeneous, and dynamic with lots of unreliable resources making it very exposed to failures. The environment is unreliable because it is geographically dispersed involving multiple autonomous administrative domains and it is composed of a large number of components. Examples of failures in the Grid
environment can be: application crash, Grid node crash, network failures, and Grid system component failures. These types of failures can affect the execution of
parallel/distributed application in the Grid environment and so, protections against these faults are crucial. Therefore, it is essential to develop efficient fault tolerant mechanisms to allow users to successfully execute Grid applications. One of the research challenges in Grid computing is to be able to develop a fault tolerant solution that will ensure Grid applications are executed reliably with minimum overhead incurred.
While checkpointing is the most common method to achieve fault tolerance, there is still a lot of work to be done to improve the efficiency of the mechanism. This thesis provides an in-depth description of a novel solution for checkpointing parallel applications executed on a Grid. The checkpointing mechanism implemented allows to checkpoint an application at regions where there is no interprocess communication involved and therefore reducing the checkpointing overhead and checkpoint size
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