Keywords and Synonyms
Distributed coordination
Problem Definition
Short History
The k-set agreement problem is a paradigm of coordination problems. Defined in the setting of systems made up of processes prone to failures, it is a simple generalization of the consensus problem (that corresponds to the case \( { k=1 } \)). That problem was introduced in 1993 by Chaudhuri [2] to investigate how the number of choices (k) allowed for the processes is related to the maximum number of processes that can crash. (After it has crashed, a process executes no more steps: a crash is a premature halting.)
Definition
Let S be a system made up of n processes where up to t can crash and where each process has an input value (called a proposed value). The problem is defined by the three following properties (i. e., any algorithm that solves that problem has to satisfy these properties):
- 1.
Termination. Every nonfaulty process decides a value.
- 2.
Validity. A decided value is a proposed value.
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© 2008 Springer-Verlag
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Raynal, M. (2008). Set Agreement. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30162-4_367
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30162-4_367
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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