checkpoint

from WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)

checkpoint
    n 1: a place (as at a frontier) where travellers are stopped for
         inspection and clearance

from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

checkpoint \checkpoint\ n.
   a place (as at a frontier) where travellers are stopped for
   inspection and clearance.
   [WordNet 1.5]

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

checkpoint

   <programming> Saving the current state of a program and its
   data, including intermediate results, to disk or other
   {non-volatile storage}, so that if interrupted the program
   could be restarted at the point at which the last checkpoint
   occurred.

   This facility came into popular use in {mainframe} {operating
   systemss} such as {OS/360} in which programs frequently ran
   for longer than the mean time between system failures.  If a
   program run fails because of some event beyond the program's
   control (e.g. hardware or {operating system} failure) then the
   processor time invested before the checkpoint will not have
   been wasted.

   (1995-02-07)