Sequoia: a fault-tolerant tightly coupled multiprocessor for transaction processing
- 1 February 1988
- journal article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in Computer
- Vol. 21 (2) , 37-45
- https://doi.org/10.1109/2.17
Abstract
The Sequoia computer is a tightly coupled multiprocessor that avoids most of the fault-tolerance disadvantages of tight coupling by using a fault-tolerant hardware-design approach. An overview is give of how the hardware architecture and operating system (OS) work together to provide a high degree of fault tolerance with good system performance. A description of hardware is followed by a discussion of the multiprocessor synchronization problem. Kernel support for fault recovery and the recovery process itself are examined. It is shown the kernel, through a combination of locking, shadowed memory, and controlled flushing of non-write-through cache, maintains a consistent main memory state recoverable from any single-point failure. The user shared memory is also discussed.Keywords
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