Checkpoint Repair for High-Performance Out-of-Order Execution Machines

• Published in: IEEE transactions on computers Vol. C-36; no. 12; pp. 1496 - 1514
• Main Authors: Hwu, Wen-Mei W., Patt, Yale N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.12.1987; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Branch prediction repair; checkpoint repair; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems performance. Reliability; Data mining; Engines; Exact sciences and technology; high-performance computer architecture; high-performance execution; Maintenance engineering; Out of order; out-of-order exception handling; out-of-order execution; Probability density function; Registers; Software; Timing; Assign instruction; System performance; Control point; Computer architecture
• ISSN: 0018-9340; 1557-9956
• DOI: 10.1109/TC.1987.5009500

Out-or-order execution and branch prediction are two mechanisms that can be used profitably in the design of supercomputers to increase performance. Proper exception handling and branch prediction miss handling in an out-of-order execution machine do require some kind of repair mechanism which can restore the machine to a known previous state. In this paper we present a class of repair mechanisms using the concept of checkpointing. We derive several properties of checkpoint repair mechanisms. In addition, we provide algorithms for performing checkpoint repair that incur little overhead in time and modest cost in hardware. We also note that our algorithms require no additional complexity or time for use with write-back cache memory systems than they do with write-through cache memory systems, contrary to statements made by previous researchers.