Selective Recovery from Failures in a Task Parallel Programming Model

We present a fault tolerant task pool execution environment that is capable of performing fine-grain selective restart using a lightweight, distributed task completion tracking mechanism. Compared with conventional checkpoint/restart techniques, this system offers a recovery penalty that is proportional to the degree of failure rather than the system size. We evaluate this system using the Self Consistent Field (SCF) kernel which forms an important component in ab initio methods for computational chemistry. Experimental results indicate that fault tolerant task pools are robust in the presence of an arbitrary number of failures and that they offer low overhead in the absence of faults.