diff --git a/tensorflow/core/kernels/data/parallel_interleave_dataset_op.cc b/tensorflow/core/kernels/data/parallel_interleave_dataset_op.cc
index 8acc2f69e1d..244afede675 100644
--- a/tensorflow/core/kernels/data/parallel_interleave_dataset_op.cc
+++ b/tensorflow/core/kernels/data/parallel_interleave_dataset_op.cc
@@ -1317,7 +1317,20 @@ class ParallelInterleaveDatasetOp::Dataset : public DatasetBase {
         mutex_lock l(*mu_);
         TF_RETURN_IF_ERROR(
             reader->ReadScalar(prefix(), kCurrentElementsSize, &size));
-        DCHECK_EQ(current_elements_.size(), size);
+        if (current_elements_.size() != size) {
+          // This could mean two things: (1) the user created their checkpoint
+          // from a dataset with one cycle_length, then changed the cycle_length
+          // and tried to restore from the old checkpoint, or (2) the user set
+          // the cycle length to tf.data.AUTOTUNE, wrote the checkpoint from one
+          // machine, then tried to restore the checkpoint on another machine
+          // with a different CPU budget (causing autotune to pick a different
+          // cycle length).
+          return errors::FailedPrecondition(
+              "The iterator cycle length ", current_elements_.size(),
+              " is different from the cycle length to restore from the "
+              "checkpoint: ",
+              size);
+        }
       }
       if (size == 0) {
         return Status::OK();