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An algorithm with optimal failure locality for the dining philosophers problem

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Distributed Algorithms (WDAG 1994)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 857))

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Abstract

This paper presents an algorithm for the dining philosophers problem with a failure locality of two, i.e. in the presence of undetectable fail-stop failures, the algorithm guarantees that a process is free from starvation if no processes that are within two hops away from the process fail. It can be shown that any non-probabilistic algorithm for the problem has a failure locality of at least two; hence, the failure locality of our algorithm is optimal. Our algorithm combines the idea of a dynamic priority scheme with the use of a preemptive fork collecting strategy. Its response time is O(n), where n is the total number of processes, if no failures actually occur or O(n 2) in the presence of failures. As an application, we show how the algorithm can be used to derive a scheduling algorithm for the synchronization of CSP-like processes that is strongly fair and has a failure locality of three.

This research was partially supported by NSF PYI Award number ASC 9157610 and by ONR under grant number N00014-91-J-1605. The work reported here is based on a chapter of the first author's Ph.D. dissertation.

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Author information

Author notes

  1. Yih-Kuen Tsay

    Present address: , P.O. Box 325, S-751 05, Uppsala, Sweden

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden

    Yih-Kuen Tsay

  2. Computer Science Department, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Rajive L. Bagrodia

Authors
  1. Yih-Kuen Tsay
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  2. Rajive L. Bagrodia
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yih-Kuen Tsay .

Editor information

Gerard Tel Paul Vitányi

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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Tsay, YK., Bagrodia, R.L. (1994). An algorithm with optimal failure locality for the dining philosophers problem. In: Tel, G., Vitányi, P. (eds) Distributed Algorithms. WDAG 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 857. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0020441

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0020441

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58449-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48799-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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