Algorithm Based Fault Tolerant and Check Pointing for High Performance Computing Systems

• Published in: Journal of applied sciences (Asian Network for Scientific Information) Vol. 9; no. 22; pp. 3947 - 3956
• Main Authors: Hamidi, Hodjatollah, Vafaei, A., Monadjemi, A.H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 15.11.2009
• ISSN: 1812-5654
• DOI: 10.3923/jas.2009.3947.3956

We present a new approach to fault tolerance for High Performance Computing system. An important consideration in the design of high performance multiprocessor systems is to ensure the correctness of the results computed in the presence of transient and intermittent failures. Concurrent error detection and correction have been applied to such systems in order to achieve reliability. Algorithm Based Fault Tolerance (ABFT) has been suggested as a cost-effective concurrent error detection scheme. This dissertation explores fault tolerance in a wide variety of matrix operations for parallel and distributed scientific computing. It proposes a novel computing paradigm to provide fault tolerance for numerical algorithms. The research reported in this study has been motivated by the complexity involved in the analysis and design of ABFT systems. We also present, implement and evaluate early detection in ABFT. In early detection, we try to detect the errors that occur in the checksum calculation before starting the actual computation. Early detection improves throughput in cases of intensive computations and cases of high error rates. This dissertation explores fault tolerance in a wide variety of matrix operations for parallel and distributed scientific computing. An empirical performance evaluation of the implementations on a network of workstation confirms that the advantages of our paradigm are its low overhead, simplicity, ease of implementation and feasibility to scientific applications.