Abstract
We present an algorithm to simulate Read-Modify-Write registers in a message passing system with unreliable asynchronous processors and asynchronous communication. The algorithm works correctly in the presence of a strong adversary that can stop up to T processors, or stop the delivery of their messages where T=[N/2]−1 and N is the number of processors in the system. This is the best resilience that can be achieved in the message passing systems. The high resilience of the algorithm is obtained by using randomized consensus algorithms and a robust communication primitive. The use of this primitive allows a processor to exchange local information with a majority of processors in a consistent way and therefore, make decisions safely. The simulator makes it possible to translate algorithms for the shared memory model to that for the message passing model. With some minor modifications the algorithm can be used to robustly simulate shared queues, shared stacks, etc.
This research was supported in part by the U. S Army Research Office under grant DAAL03-87-G-0004 and by the Information Science Research Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Aguilar, O.R., Datta, A.K., Ghosh, S. (1991). Sharing memory in asynchronous message passing systems. In: Dehne, F., Sack, JR., Santoro, N. (eds) Algorithms and Data Structures. WADS 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 519. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0028256
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0028256
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