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A Pleasant Stroll Through the Land of Distributed Machines, Computation, and Universality

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Abstract

Not only the world is distributed, but more and more applications are distributed. Hence, a fundamental question is the following one: What can be computed in a distributed system? The answer to this question depends on the environment in which evolves the considered distributed system, i.e., on the assumptions the system relies on. This environment is very often left implicit and nearly always not formulated in terms of precise underlying requirements. In the extreme case where the environment is such that there is no synchrony assumption and the computing entities may commit failures, some problems become impossible to solve. Given a distributed computing problem, it is consequently important to know the weakest assumptions (lower bounds) that give the limits beyond which the considered distributed problem cannot be solved. This paper is a short introduction to this kind of issues. It is made up of short sections, each addressing an important point of the theory of distributed computing. Its style is voluntarily informal.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These articles were awarded the “Dijkstra Prize” (in 2000, 2001, and 2003, respectively). As stated in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra_Prize, this prize “is given for outstanding papers on the principles of distributed computing, whose significance and impact on the theory and/or practice of distributed computing has been evident for at least a decade”.

  2. 2.

    This paper received the Dijkstra Prize in 2013.

  3. 3.

    This paper received the Dijkstra Prize in 2005.

  4. 4.

    This paper received the Dijkstra Prize in 2011.

  5. 5.

    This paper received the Dijkstra Prize in 2000

  6. 6.

    This paper received the Dijkstra Prize in 2003

  7. 7.

    [16] This paper received the Dijkstra Prize in 2002

  8. 8.

    The second of these papers received the Dijkstra Prize in 2007.

  9. 9.

    These papers received the Dijkstra Prize in 2010.

  10. 10.

    These papers received the Dijkstra Prize in 2015.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Universitaire de France and Univ Rennes, IRISA CNRS INRIA, Rennes, France

    Michel Raynal

  2. Department of Computing, Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong

    Michel Raynal & Jiannong Cao

Authors
  1. Michel Raynal
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  2. Jiannong Cao
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Correspondence to Michel Raynal .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université d'Orléans, Orleans, France

    Jérôme Durand-Lose

  2. Université Paris Est, Creteil, France

    Sergey Verlan

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Raynal, M., Cao, J. (2018). A Pleasant Stroll Through the Land of Distributed Machines, Computation, and Universality. In: Durand-Lose, J., Verlan, S. (eds) Machines, Computations, and Universality. MCU 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10881. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92402-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92402-1_2

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