FT-iSort: Efficient fault tolerance for introsort

Sihuan Li, Hongbo Li, Xin Liang, Jieyang Chen, Elisabeth Giem, Kaiming Ouyang, Kai Zhao, Sheng Di, Franck Cappello, Zizhong Chen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Introspective sorting is a ubiquitous sorting algorithm which underlies many large scale distributed systems. Hardware-mediated soft errors can result in comparison and memory errors, and thus cause introsort to generate incorrect output, which in turn disrupts systems built upon introsort; hence, it is critical to incorporate fault tolerance capability within introsort. This paper proposes the first theoretically-sound, practical fault tolerant introsort with negligible overhead: FT-iSort. To tolerate comparison errors, we use minimal TMR protection via exploiting the properties of the effects of soft errors on introsort. This algorithm-based selective protection incurs far less overhead than nave TMR protection designed to protect an entire application. To tolerate memory errors that escape DRAM error correcting code, we propose XOR-based re-execution. We incorporate our fault tolerance method into the well-known parallel sorting implementation HykSort, and we find that fault tolerant HykSort incurs negligible overhead and obtains nearly the same scalability as unprotected HykSort.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of SC 2019
Subtitle of host publicationThe International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
ISBN (Electronic)9781450362290
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 17 2019
Externally publishedYes
Event2019 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC 2019 - Denver, United States
Duration: Nov 17 2019Nov 22 2019

Publication series

NameInternational Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC
ISSN (Print)2167-4329
ISSN (Electronic)2167-4337

Conference

Conference2019 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityDenver
Period11/17/1911/22/19

Keywords

  • Algorithm based fault tolerance
  • Comparison errors
  • Fault tolerant sorting
  • Introsort
  • Soft errors

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Software

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'FT-iSort: Efficient fault tolerance for introsort'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this