In many cases, Stand-alone training and Distributed training can be aborted by the software problem or hardware problem. More seriously, we waste so much time and the performance of the machine but get nothing, which makes us frustrating and we have to restart it again.
## Purpose
The feature of ```Checkpoint``` can save Intermediate model variables, lookup table variable, and other needs data in checkpoint directory. When the exception occurs, we can load these variables from the checkpoint directory immediately.
## Introduce
### Complete Features Currently：
1. The Trainer 0 will save model variables in training.
2. Each of the Trainer will save its own arguments needed.
3. Each of the Parameter Server will save ```Distribute Lookup Table``` variables in training.
### Fluid Checkpoint directory structure：
```
checkpoint_dir (the checkpoint directory user define)
After all the things done, the train will save checkpoint at the specified epoch and step, when the train is aborted, the user can restart it, the train will restore from the latest copy.
1. Make the ```checkpoint_dir``` only be used by one train job.
2. The number of ```max_num_checkpoints``` need to be adjusted by the disk size and model size.
3. Too frequently to slow down the train speed, so too ```small epoch_interval``` and ```step_interval``` are not suitable.
4. **In distributed train**, each Trainer will save arguments in its ```checkpoint_dir``` (Only Trainer 0 will save model variables). We need **distributed file system (HDFS, etc)** to merge all the ```checkpoint_dir``` to get the whole data.
