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Distributed Programming with Tasks

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Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2010)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 6490))

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Abstract

In round-by-round models of distributed computing processes run in a sequence of (synchronous or asynchronous) rounds. The advantage of the round-by-round approach is that invariants established in the first round are preserved in later rounds. An elegant asynchronous round-by-round shared memory model, is the iterated snapshots model (IS). Instead of the snapshots model where processes share an array m[·] that can be accessed any number of times, indexed by process ID, where P i writes to m[i] and can take a snapshot of the entire array, we have processes share a two-dimensional array m[·,·], indexed by iteration number and by process ID, where P i in iteration r writes once to m[r, i] and takes one snapshot of row r, m[r,·]. The IS model lends itself more easily to combinatorial analysis. However, to show that whenever a task is impossible in the IS model the task is impossible in the snapshots model, a simulation is needed. Such a simulation was presented by Borowsky and Gafni in PODC97; namely, it was shown how to take a wait-free protocol for the snapshots model, and transform it into a protocol for the IS model, solving the same task.

In this paper we present a new simulation from the snapshots model to the IS model, and show that it can be extended to work with models stronger that wait-free. The main contribution is to show that the simulation can work with models that have access to certain communication objects, called 01-tasks. This extends the result of Gafni, Rajsbaum and Herlihy in DISC’2006 stating that renaming is strictly weaker than set agreement from the IS model to the usual non-iterated wait-free read/write shared memory model.

We also show that our simulation works with t-resilient models and the more general dependent process failure model of Junqueira and Marzullo. This version of the simulation extends previous results by Herlihy and Rajsbaum in PODC’2010 and DISC’2010 about the topological connectivity of a protocol complex in an iterated dependent process failure model, to the corresponding non-iterated model.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

    Eli Gafni

  2. Instituto de Matemáticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, D.F. 04510, Mexico

    Sergio Rajsbaum

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  1. Eli Gafni
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  2. Sergio Rajsbaum
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Washington University, Campus Box 1045, One Brookings Drive, 63130, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Chenyang Lu

  2. Osaka University, Japan

    Toshimitsu Masuzawa

  3. LaBRI, University of Bordeaux, 351 cours de la Libération, 33405, Talence, France

    Mohamed Mosbah

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Gafni, E., Rajsbaum, S. (2010). Distributed Programming with Tasks. In: Lu, C., Masuzawa, T., Mosbah, M. (eds) Principles of Distributed Systems. OPODIS 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6490. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17653-1_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17653-1_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-17652-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-17653-1

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