Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work
1986; Lamport, Vitanyi, Awerbuch
Problem Definition
Consider a system of asynchronous processes that communicate among themselves by only executing read and write operations on a set of shared variables (also known as shared registers). The system has no global clock or other synchronization primitives. Every shared variable is associated with a process (called owner) which writes it and the other processes may read it. An execution of a write (read) operation on a shared variable will be referred to as a Write (Read) on that variable. A Write on a shared variable puts a value from a pre-determined finite domain into the variable, and a Read reports a value from the domain. A process that writes (reads) a variable is called a writer (reader) of the variable.
The goal is to construct shared variables in which the following two properties hold. (1) Operation executions are not necessarily atomic, that is, they are not indivisible but rather...
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
Notes
- 1.
Boolean variables are referred to as bits.
Recommended Reading
Bloom B (1988) Constructing two-writer atomic registers. IEEE Trans Comput 37(12):1506–1514
Burns JE, Peterson GL (1987) Constructing multi-reader atomic values from non-atomic values. In: Proceedings of the 6th ACM symposium principles of distributed computing, Vancouver, 10–12 Aug 1987, pp 222–231
Dolev D, Shavit N (1997) Bounded concurrent time-stamp systems are constructible. SIAM J Comput 26(2):418–455
Haldar S, Vitanyi P (2002) Bounded concurrent timestamp systems using vector clocks. J Assoc Comput Mach 49(1):101–126
Israeli A, Li M (1993) Bounded time-stamps. Distr Comput 6:205–209 (Preliminary, more extended, version in: proceedings of the 28th IEEE symposium on foundations of computer science, pp 371–382, 1987)
Israeli A, Shaham A (1992) Optimal multi-writer multireader atomic register. In: Proceedings of the 11th ACM symposium on principles distributed computing, Vancouver, 10–12 Aug 1992, pp 71–82
Kirousis LM, Kranakis E, Vitányi PMB (1987) Atomic multireader register. In: Proceedings of the workshop distributed algorithms. Lecture notes computer science, vol 312. Springer, Berlin, pp 278–296
Lamport L (1986) On interprocess communication – part I: basic formalism, part II: algorithms. Distrib Comput 1(2):77–101
Li M, Tromp J, Vitányi PMB (1996) How to share concurrent wait-free variables. J ACM 43(4):723–746 (Preliminary version: Li M, Vitányi PMB (1987) A very simple construction for atomic multiwriter register. Technical report TR-01–87, Computer Science Department, Harvard University, Nov 1987)
Peterson GL (1983) Concurrent reading while writing. ACM Trans Program Lang Syst 5(1):56–65
Peterson GL, Burns JE (1987) Concurrent reading while writing II: the multiwriter case. In: Proceedings of the 28th IEEE symposium on foundations of computer science, Los Angeles, 27–29 Oct 1987, pp 383–392
Singh AK, Anderson JH, Gouda MG (1994) The elusive atomic register. J ACM 41(2):311–339 (Preliminary version in: proceedings of the 6th ACM symposium on principles distributed computing, 1987)
Tromp J (1989) How to construct an atomic variable. In: Proceedings of the workshop distributed algorithms. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 392. Springer, Berlin, pp 292–302
Vitányi PMB, Awerbuch B (1987) Atomic shared register access by asynchronous hardware. In: Proceedings of the 27th IEEE symposium on foundations of computer science, Los Angeles, 27–29 Oct 1987, pp 233–243 (Errata, Proceedings of the 28th IEEE symposium on foundations of computer science, Los Angeles, 27–29 Oct 1987, pp 487–487)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Vitányi, P. (2016). Registers. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_338
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_338
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-2863-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-2864-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceReference Module Computer Science and Engineering