An efficient algorithm for removing useless logged messages in SBML protocols

Abstract

To continuously log messages in the limited volatile memories of their sending processes, existing SBML protocols force the processes to periodically flush the message log into the stable storage or messages in the log to be useless for future failures and then removes them. But, these garbage collection algorithms may result in a large number of stable storage accesses or high communication and checkpointing overheads as inter-process communication rate increases. To address this problem, we propose an efficient algorithm to autonomously remove useless log information in its volatile storage by piggybacking only some additional information. It requires no extra message and forced checkpoint. Additionally, the algorithm efficiently supports fast commit of all output to the outside world. Simulation results show that our algorithm considerably outperforms the traditional algorithm with respect to the average elapsed time required until the memory buffer for message logging of a process is full. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.