At block 840 of the method, a checkpoint register and a checkpoint value may be assigned to the connection between the first node and the second node of the graph (e.g., the input data set). An instruction generation procedure may assign the checkpoint register and checkpoint value to the connection (i.e., the graph edge connecting the first and second nodes). The integrated circuit device can implement checkpoints using hardware registers. The assigned checkpoint value is set in the checkpoint register when instructions executed by the execution engine reach the connection (i.e., dependency) between the nodes. Hardware registers can have a small footprint on the chip die, and little circuitry is needed to write a register value or check a register value.

The instruction generation procedure may assign different checkpoint values for the same checkpoint register or may assign values for different checkpoint registers to dependency edges of the dataflow graph in order to implement the dependencies represented by the edges. A checkpoint register may be a fixed length, for example, 256 bits or another length. The assigned checkpoint values for each checkpoint register may be monotonically increasing values.

In order to maintain the order of operations having data and/or resource dependencies, at block 850 a first set of program code including a checkpoint set instruction may be generated for the first execution engine. The instructions in the first set of program code for performing the first operation may include the checkpoint set instruction as a last instruction in the first set of program code. The checkpoint set instruction may be an instruction to set a value (i.e., a checkpoint) associated with assigned to a dependency. The integrated circuit device can implement the checkpoint using a hardware register, e.g., a checkpoint register.