# VELOC: VEry Low Overhead Checkpointing in the Age of Exascale

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.02131 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02131/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 3 Mar 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Crab: A Semantics-Aware Checkpoint/Restore Runtime for Agent Sandboxes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.28138/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Checkpointing large amounts of related data concurrently to stable storage is a common I/O pattern of many HPC applications. However, such a pattern frequently leads to I/O bottlenecks that lead to poor scalability and performance. As modern HPC infrastructures continue to evolve, there is a growing gap between compute capacity vs. I/O capabilities. Furthermore, the storage hierarchy is becoming increasingly heterogeneous: in addition to parallel file systems, it comprises burst buffers, key-value stores, deep memory hierarchies at node level, etc. In this context, state of art is insufficient to deal with the diversity of vendor APIs, performance and persistency characteristics. This extended abstract presents an overview of VeloC (Very Low Overhead Checkpointing System), a checkpointing runtime specifically design to address these challenges for the next generation Exascale HPC applications and systems. VeloC offers a simple API at user level, while employing an advanced multi-level resilience strategy that transparently optimizes the performance and scalability of checkpointing by leveraging heterogeneous storage.