CIFTS: A coordinated infrastructure for fault-tolerant systems

R. Gupta, P. Beckman, B. H. Park, E. Lusk, P. Hargrove, A. Geist, D. K. Panda, A. Lumsdaine, J. Dongarra

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

46 Scopus citations

Abstract

Considerable work has been done on providing fault tolerance capabilities for different software components on large-scale high-end computing systems. Thus far, however, these fault-tolerant components have worked insularly and independently and information about faults is rarely shared. Such lack of system-wide fault tolerance is emerging as one of the biggest problems on leadership-class systems. In this paper, we propose a coordinated infrastructure, named CIFTS, that enables system software components to share fault information with each other and adapt to faults in a holistic manner. Central to the CIFTS infrastructure is a Fault Tolerance Backplane (FTB) that enables fault notification and awareness throughout the software stack, including fault-aware libraries, middleware, and applications. We present details of the CIFTS infrastructure and the interface specification that has allowed various software programs, including MPICH2, MVAPICH, Open MPI, and PVFS, to plug into the CIFTS infrastructure. Further, through a detailed evaluation we demonstrate the nonintrusive low-overhead capability of CIFTS that lets applications run with minimal performance degradation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationICPP-2009 - The 38th International Conference on Parallel Processing
Pages237-245
Number of pages9
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Event38th International Conference on Parallel Processing, ICPP-2009 - Vienna, Austria
Duration: Sep 22 2009Sep 25 2009

Publication series

NameProceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing
ISSN (Print)0190-3918

Conference

Conference38th International Conference on Parallel Processing, ICPP-2009
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityVienna
Period09/22/0909/25/09

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'CIFTS: A coordinated infrastructure for fault-tolerant systems'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this