Abstract
This article unifies and generalizes fundamental results related to n-process asynchronous crash-prone distributed computing. More precisely, it proves that for every 0≤k≤n, assuming that process failures occur only before the number of participating processes bypasses a predefined threshold that equals n-k (a participating process is a process that has executed at least one statement of its code), an asynchronous algorithm exists that solves consensus for n processes in the presence of f crash failures if and only iff≤k. In a very simple and interesting way, the “extreme” case k=0 boils down to the celebrated FLP impossibility result (1985, 1987). Moreover, the second extreme case, namely k=n, captures the celebrated mutual exclusion result by E.W. Dijkstra (1965) that states that mutual exclusion can be solved for n processes in an asynchronous read/write shared memory system where any number of processes may crash (but only) before starting to participate in the algorithm (that is, participation is not required, but once a process starts participating it may not fail). More generally, the possibility/impossibility stated above demonstrates that more failures can be tolerated when they occur earlier in the computation (hence the title).
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Structural Information and Communication Complexity - 31st International Colloquium, SIROCCO 2024, Proceedings |
Editors | Yuval Emek |
Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH |
Pages | 226-237 |
Number of pages | 12 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783031606021 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2024 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | 31st International Colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity, SIROCCO 2024 - Vietri sul Mare, Italy Duration: 27 May 2024 → 29 May 2024 |
Publication series
Name | Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) |
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Volume | 14662 LNCS |
ISSN (Print) | 0302-9743 |
ISSN (Electronic) | 1611-3349 |
Conference
Conference | 31st International Colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity, SIROCCO 2024 |
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Country/Territory | Italy |
City | Vietri sul Mare |
Period | 27/05/24 → 29/05/24 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.
Keywords
- Adopt/commit
- Asynchronous read/write system
- Concurrency
- Consensus
- Contention
- Mutual exclusion
- Process crash
- Process participation
- Simplicity
- Time-constrained crash failure