Durable memory RS/6000 system design

Author

Abbott, M. ; Har, D. ; Herger, L. ; Kauffmann, M. ; Mak, K. ; Murdock, J. ; Schulz, C. ; Smith, T.B. ; Tremaine, B. ; Yeh, D. ; Wong, L.

Author_Institution

IBM Thomas J. Watson Res. Center, Hawthorne, NY, USA

fYear

1994

fDate

15-17 June 1994

Firstpage

414

Lastpage

423

Abstract

The DM/6000 prototype is a fault-tolerant/durable-memory RS/6000. The main storage of this system is battery backed so as to maintain memory content across prolonged power interruptions. In addition, there are no single points of failure, and all likely multiple failure scenarios are covered. The prototype is intended to match the data integrity and availability characteristics of RAID5 disks. Redundancy is managed in hardware and in transparent to the software; application programs and the operating system (AIX) can run unmodified. The prototype is based on the IBM PowerPC 601 microprocessor operating at 80 MHz and is equivalent in performance and software appearance to a conventional 4-way shared bus, cache coherent, symmetric multiprocessor (SMP), with 4 gigabytes of non-volatile main storage.<>

Keywords

data integrity; fault tolerant computing; integrated memory circuits; microprocessor chips; redundancy; 4 GB; 80 MHz; AIX; IBM PowerPC 601 microprocessor; RAID5 disks; application programs; data integrity; durable memory RS/6000; fault-tolerance; main storage; nonvolatile main storage; operating system; power interruptions; symmetric multiprocessor; system design; Application software; Availability; Batteries; Delta modulation; Fault tolerance; Hardware; Power system management; Prototypes; Redundancy; Software prototyping;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Fault-Tolerant Computing, 1994. FTCS-24. Digest of Papers., Twenty-Fourth International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Austin, TX, USA

Print_ISBN

0-8186-5520-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FTCS.1994.315616

Filename

315616