Abstract
Aguilera et al. introduced and solved the mailbox problem in [4], and used their mailbox algorithm to provide an efficient solution to the N-buffer problem. In the same paper, they also pointed out that both the mailbox problem and the N-buffer problem are solved by means of a more general problem: the signaling problem. The authors of [4] presented a non-blocking solution to the signaling problem, and asked whether a wait-free solution to the signaling problem exists. In our paper, we provide a positive answer to this question by introducing a bounded wait-free signaling algorithm and proving its correctness. In addition, our algorithm is more efficient than the one presented in [4] since it uses flags of smaller size. Furthermore, by using our algorithm, we provide a wait-free solution to the N-buffer problem which is more efficient than the one in [4].
Research partially supported by the Frankel Center for Computer Science at Ben-Gurion University.
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
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Abraham, U., Amram, G.: On the Mailbox Problem. arXiv:1307.5619 [cs.DC] (2013)
Afek, Y., Attiya, H., Dolev, D., Gafni, E., Merritt, M., Shavit, N.: Atomic snapshots of shared memory. Journal of the ACM 40, 873–890 (1993)
Aguilera, M.K., Gafni, E., Lamport, L.: The Mailbox Problem (Extended Abstract). In: Taubenfeld, G. (ed.) DISC 2008. LNCS, vol. 5218, pp. 1–15. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Aguilera, M.K., Gafni, E., Lamport, L.: The Mailbox Problem. Distributed Computing 23, 113–134 (2010)
Anderson, J.H.: Composite registers. Distributed Computing 6, 141–154 (1993)
Herlihy, M., Wing, J.: Linearizability: A correctness condition for concurrent objects. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 12, 463–492 (1990)
Lamport, L.: Proving the Correctness of Multiprocess Programs. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 3, 125–145 (1977)
Lamport, L.: On Interprocess Communication, Part I: Basic formalism, Part II: Algorithms. Distributed Computing 1, 77–101 (1986)
Tromp, J.: How to Construct an Atomic Variable (extended abstract). In: Bermond, J.-C., Raynal, M. (eds.) WDAG 1989. LNCS, vol. 392, pp. 292–302. Springer, Heidelberg (1989)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Amram, G. (2014). On the Signaling Problem. In: Chatterjee, M., Cao, Jn., Kothapalli, K., Rajsbaum, S. (eds) Distributed Computing and Networking. ICDCN 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8314. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45249-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45249-9_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-45248-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-45249-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)