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Waiting in Concurrent Algorithms

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Networked Systems (NETYS 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCCN,volume 9944))

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Abstract

Between the two extremes, lock-based algorithms, which involve “a lot of waiting”, and wait-free algorithms, which are “free of locking and waiting”, there is an interesting spectrum of different levels of waiting. This unexplored spectrum is formally defined and its properties are investigated. New progress conditions, called k-waiting, for \(k\ge 0\), which are intended to capture the “amount of waiting” of processes in asynchronous concurrent algorithms, are introduced. To illustrate the utility of the new conditions, they are used to derive new lower and upper bounds, and impossibility results for well-known basic problems such as consensus, election, renaming and mutual exclusion. Furthermore, the relation between waiting and fairness is explored.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the case of a beginning process, “its operation” means the operation that the process is about to start executing.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Interdisciplinary Center, P.O. Box 167, 46150, Herzliya, Israel

    Gadi Taubenfeld

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  1. Gadi Taubenfeld
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Correspondence to Gadi Taubenfeld .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Uppsala University , Uppsala, Sweden

    Parosh Aziz Abdulla

  2. Université Paris Diderot , Paris, France

    Carole Delporte-Gallet

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Taubenfeld, G. (2016). Waiting in Concurrent Algorithms. In: Abdulla, P., Delporte-Gallet, C. (eds) Networked Systems. NETYS 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9944. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46140-3_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46140-3_29

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46139-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46140-3

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