A construction of distributed reference counting

Abstract.

Distributed reference counting is a general purpose technique, which may be used, e.g., to detect termination of distributed programs or to implement distributed garbage collection. We present a distributed reference counting algorithm and a mechanical proof of correctness carried out using the proof assistant Coq. The algorithm is formalised by an abstract machine, and its correctness has two different facets. The safety property ensures that if there exists a reference to a resource, then its reference counter will be strictly positive. Liveness guarantees that if all references to a resource are deleted, its reference counter will eventually become null.