This article proposes an original approach that applies the Rollback-Dependency Trackability (RDT) property to implement a new non-blocking synchronous checkpointing protocol, called RDT-NBS, that takes mutable checkpoints and efficiently supports concurrent initiators. Mutable checkpoints can be saved in non-stable storage and make it possible for non-blocking synchronous checkpointing protocols to save a minimal number of checkpoints in stable storage during the construction of a consistent global checkpoint. We prove that this minimality property does not hold in presence of concurrent checkpointing initiations. Even though, RDT-NBS uses mutable checkpoints to reduce the use of stable memory assuring the existence of a consistent global checkpoint in stable storage. We also present simulation results that compare RDT-NBS to quasisynchronous RDT. © 2006 IEEE. 411420Baldoni, R., Helary, J., Mostefaoui, A., Raynal, M., A Communication-Induced Checkpoint Protocol that Ensures Rollback Dependency Trackability (1997) IEEE Symp. on Fault Tolerant ComputingCao, G., Singhal, M., On Coordinated Checkpointing in Distributed Systems (1998) IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 9 (12), pp. 1213-1225. , DecCao, G., Singhal, M., On the Impossibility of Min-process Non-blocking Checkpointing and an Efficient Checkpointing Algorithm for Mobile Computing Systems (1998) Proc. 27th Internat. Conf. on Parallel Processing, pp. 37-44. , New York, IEEE PressCao, G., Singhal, M., Checkpointing with Mutable Checkpoints (2003) Theoretical Computer Science, 290 (2), pp. 1127-1148. , janChandy, M., Lamport, L., Distributed Snapshots: Determining Global States of Distributed Systems (1985) ACM Transaction on Computing Systems, 3 (1), pp. 63-75. , FebE. N. Elnozahy and D. B. J. ad W. Zwaenepoel. The Performance of Consistent Checkpointing. In Proc. of the 11th Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, pages 86-95, Oct. 1992Garcia, I.C., Buzato, L.E., Progressive Construction of Consistent Global Checkpoints (1999) 19th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, , Austin, Texas, USA, JuneI. C. Garcia and L. E. Buzato. Using Common Knowledge to Improve Fixed-Dependency-After-Send. In II Workshop de Testes e Tolerância a Falhas, Curitiba, Paraná, July 2000. Available as technical report number IC-99-22 (http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/ic-tr-ftp/1999/99-22.ps.gz)Garcia, I.C., Buzato, L.E., An Efficient Checkpointing Protocol for the Minimal Characterization of Operational Rollback-Dependency Trackability (2004) 23rd Symposium on Reliable Distributed Computing Systems, , Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, OctKoo, R., Toueg, S., Checkpointing and RollbackRecovery for Distributed Systems (1987) IEEE Transaction on Software Engineering, 13, pp. 23-31. , JanKumar, P., Kumar, L., Chauhan, R., Gupta, V., A Non-intrusive Minimum Process Synchronous Checkpointing Protocol for Mobile Distributed Systems (2005) IEEE International Personal Wireless Communications, pp. 491-495. , janLamport, L., Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System (1978) Commun. ACM, 21 (7), pp. 558-565. , JulyManivannan, D., Netzer, R.H.B., Singhal, M., Finding Consistent Global Checkpoints in a Distributed Computation (1997) IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, pp. 623-627. , JuneMattern, F., Virtual Time and Global States of Distributed Systems (1989) Parallel and Distributed Algorithms, pp. 215-226. , Elsevier Science Publishers B.V, North-HollandNetzer, R.H.B., Xu, J., Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Consistent Global Snapshots (1995) IEEE Transaction on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 6 (2), pp. 165-169Prakash, R., Singhal, M., Low-Cost Checkpointing and Failure Recovery in Mobile Computing Systems (1996) IEEE Transaction on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 7 (10), pp. 1035-1048. , OctSchmidt, F.P.R., Garcia, I.C., Buzato, L.E., Optimal Asynchronous Garbage Collection for RDT Checkpointing Protocols (2005) 25th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, , Columbus, Ohio, USA, JuneRandell, B., System Structure for Software Fault Tolerance (1975) IEEE Transaction on Software Engineering, 1 (2), pp. 220-232. , JuneSilva, L.M., Silva, J.G., Global Checkpointing for Distributed Programs (1992) Proc. of the 11th Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, pp. 155-162. , OctTsai, J., Kuo, S.-Y., Wang, Y.-M., Theoretical Analysis for Communication- Induced Checkpointing Protocols with Rollback-Dependency Trackability (1998) IEEE Transaction on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 9 (10), pp. 963-971. , OctVieira, G.M.D., Buzato, L.E., Distributed Checkpointing: Analysis and Benchmarks. Curitiba, Paraná (2006) Proceedings of Simpósio Brasileiro de Redes de Computadores, , May, To appear inWang, Y.M., Consistent Global Checkpoints that Contain a Given Set of Local Checkpoints (1997) IEEE Trans. on Computers, 46 (4), pp. 456-468. , Apr