The Study of the Transfer of Interrupted Computations between Computers and SAEC-0 User's Manual.
Abstract
The project began as an effort to study the transfer of interrupted computations between machines. Transferring an interrupted computation means moving a program and its execution environment from one machine to another, while the program is running and without to restart the computation. There are both economic reasons and technical reasons for pursuing this goal. Suppose we have - as we do - implementations of a programming system on machines with different resources and different costs for their use. We want to use the cheapest machine with adequate resources for as long as possible. Only when we need a function or resource that is only available on another machine, do we want to migrate to the other machine and then perhaps only for the duration of our use of that function or resource. To take the system of interest, the programming system ECL, and the machines presently available, the PDP10 and PDP11/70, we can, for instance, be computing on the PDP11 and, at some point, require more space than it provides. Or we may want to use a package that is available only on PDP10. We would then like to move the computation -- or some part of it -- to the PDP10, continue the computation there and possibly return to the PDP11, with the migration transparent to the user. Such a facility permits us to share resources in an economical fashion.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 30, 1981
- Accession Number
- ADA109851
Entities
People
- Joel Trimble