To quote Matt Dillon (of DragonFly BSD), "Checkpointing allows you to "freeze" a copy of an application so that, in theory, you can restore the program to that running state at a later point in time. Useful, for instance, if you have a program that takes a long time to complete and you don't want to have to restart from the beginning if there's an interruption."

References

• http://www.shiningsilence.com/dbsdlog/archives/000075.html