Keywords and Synonyms
Agreement; Byzantine agreement
Problem Definition
This problem is concerned with using the multi-writer multi-reader register primitive in the shared memory model to design a fast, wait-free implementation of consensus. Below are detailed descriptions of each of these terms.
Consensus Problems
There are n processors and the goal is to design distributed algorithms to solve the following two consensus problems for these processors.
Problem 1 (Binary consensus)
Input: Processor i has input bit b i .
Output: Each processor i has output bit \( { b^{\prime}_i } \) such that: 1) all the output bits \( { b^{\prime}_i } \) equal the same value v; and 2) \( { v = b_i } \) for some processor i.
Problem 2 (Id consensus)
Input: Processor i has a unique id u i .
Output: Each processor i has output value \( { u^{\prime}_i } \) such that: 1) all the output values \( { u^{\prime}_i } \) equal the same value u; and 2) \( { u = u_i } \) for some processor i.
Wait-Free
This result...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Recommended Reading
Aspnes, J.: Randomized protocols for asynchronous consensus. Distrib. Comput. 16(2–3), 165–175 (2003)
Aspnes, J., Waarts, O.: Randomized consensus in expected \( { o(n \log^2 n) } \) operations per processor. In: Proceedings of the 33rd Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science. 24–26 October 1992, pp. 137–146. IEEE Computer Society, Pittsburgh (1992)
Attiya, H., Censor, K.: Tight bounds for asynchronous randomized consensus. In: Proceedings of the Symposium on the Theory of Computation. San Diego, 11–13 June 2007 ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) (2007)
Aumann, Y.: Efficient asynchronous consensus with the weak adversary scheduler. In: Symposium on Principles of Distrib. Comput.(PODC) Santa Barbara, 21–24 August 1997, pp. 209–218. ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) (1997)
Aumann, Y., Kapach-Levy, A.: Cooperative sharing and asynchronous consensus using single-reader/single-writer registers. In: Proceedings of 10th Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium of Discrete Algorithms (SODA) Baltimore, 17–19 January 1999, pp. 61–70. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) (1999)
Dolev, D., Dwork, C., Stockmeyer, L.: On the minimal synchronism needed for distributed consensus. J. ACM (JACM) 34(1), 77–97 (1987)
Fischer, M.J., Lynch, N.A., Paterson, M.: Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process. In: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD Symposium on Principles of Database System (PODS) Atlante, 21–23 March, pp. 1–7. Association for Computational Machinery (ACM) (1983)
Herlihy, M.: Wait-free synchronization. ACM Trans. Programm. Lang. Syst. 13(1), 124–149 (1991)
Lynch, N.: Distributed Algorithms. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo (1996)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag
About this entry
Cite this entry
Chandra, T.D. (2008). Randomization in Distributed Computing. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30162-4_321
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30162-4_321
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-30770-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-30162-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceReference Module Computer Science and Engineering