Rapid Recovery of Program Execution Under Power Failures for Embedded Systems with NVM

TL;DR

This paper introduces a checkpointing technique triggered by function calls to rapidly recover embedded systems with NVM after power failures, reducing write overhead and backup size.

Contribution

It proposes a novel function call-triggered checkpointing method with pseudo-function calls and exponential backup strategies to optimize recovery and NVM lifespan.

Findings

99.8% reduction in stack backup size compared to log-based methods

80.5% reduction in backup size compared to step-based methods

Effective recovery under various power failure scenarios

Abstract

After power is switched on, recovering the interrupted program from the initial state can cause negative impact. Some programs are even unrecoverable. To rapid recovery of program execution under power failures, the execution states of checkpoints are backed up by NVM under power failures for embedded systems with NVM. However, frequent checkpoints will shorten the lifetime of the NVM and incur significant write overhead. In this paper, the technique of checkpoint setting triggered by function calls is proposed to reduce the write on NVM. The evaluation results show an average of 99.8% and 80.5$% reduction on NVM backup size for stack backup, compared to the log-based method and step-based method. In order to better achieve this, we also propose pseudo-function calls to increase backup points to reduce recovery costs, and exponential incremental call-based backup methods to reduce backup costs in the loop. To further avoid the content on NVM is cluttered and out of NVM, a method to clean the contents on the NVM that are useless for restoration is proposed. Based on aforementioned problems and techniques, the recovery technology is proposed, and the case is used to analyze how to recover rapidly under different power failures.