Abstract
It is an interesting question whether one can device highly fault tolerant distributed protocols that tolerate both processor failures as well as transient memory errors. To answer this question we consider self-stabilizing wait-free shared memory objects. In this paper we propose a general definition of a self-stabilizing wait-free shared memory object that expresses safety guarantees even in the face of processor failures. We prove that within this framework one cannot construct a self-stabilizing single-reader single-writer regular bit from single-reader single-writer safe bits. This impossibility result leads us to postulate a self-stabilizing dual-reader single-writer safe bit as the minimal object needed to achieve selfstabilizing wait-free interprocess communication and synchronization.
Based on this model, adaptations of well known wait-free constructions of regular and atomic shared registers are proven to be self-stabilizing.
Research partially supported by the Dutch foundation for scientific research (NWO) through NFI Proj. ALADDIN (contr. # NF 62-376) and a NUFFIC Fellowship, and by the EC ESPRIT II BRA Proj. ALCOM II (contr. # 7141).
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Hoepman, J.H., Papatriantafilou, M., Tsigas, P. (1995). Self-stabilization of wait-free shared memory objects. In: Hélary, JM., Raynal, M. (eds) Distributed Algorithms. WDAG 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 972. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0022153
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0022153
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