Altera Corporation

Intel Corporation

Shiva Rao

David Alexander Munday

Jeffrey L Nye

Integrated circuits may include registers that store register states. Only a subset of the registers may store critical register states. The subset of registers may be specially demarcated, such as using synthesis directions in the hardware description, and may be coupled to dedicated extraction/loading circuitry. The extraction/loading circuitry may be implemented using soft or hard logic or can leverage existing programming or debugging circuitry on a programmable integrated circuit. The extraction/loading mechanism may also be implemented using multiplexers and associated control circuitry, scan chain circuitry, a memory-mapped interface, a tool-instantiated or user-instantiated finite state machine, or external memory interface logic. Accessing critical register states in this way can help improve efficiency with live migration events, debugging, retiming, and other integrated circuit operations.

Methods and apparatus for selectively extracting and loading register states

Live migration of a hardware accelerated application may be orchestrated by cloud services to transfer the application from a source server to a destination server. The live migration may be triggered by probe circuitry that monitors quality of service metrics for migration conditions at the source server. When live migration is initiated by the cloud services, a snapshot of all state information relevant to the application at the source server may be saved to network attached storage accessible by the destination server. Changes to said state information at the source server may be mirrored onto the network attached storage. The destination server may copy the snapshot and subsequent changes and run the application in parallel before taking complete control of the application. After a handshake operation between the source and destination servers, the application may be shut down at the source server.

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Belmont, CA, United States of America

Shiva Rao