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A knowledge-based analysis of global function computation

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Abstract

Consider a distributed system N in which each agent has an input value and each communication link has a weight. Given a global function, that is, a function f whose value depends on the whole network, the goal is for every agent to eventually compute the value f (N). We call this problem global function computation. Various solutions for instances of this problem, such as Boolean function computation, leader election, (minimum) spanning tree construction, and network determination, have been proposed, each under particular assumptions about what processors know about the system and how this knowledge can be acquired. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the problem to be solvable that generalizes a number of well-known results (Attyia et al. in J ACM 35(4):845–875, 1988; Yamashita and Kameda in IEEE Trans Parallel Distrib Syst 7(1):69–89, 1996; Yamashita and Kameda in IEEE Trans Parallel Distrib Syst 10(9):878–887, 1999). We then provide a knowledge-based (kb) program (like those of Fagin et al. (Reasoning about knowledge, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995, Distrib Comput 10(4):199–225, 1997)) that solves global function computation whenever possible. Finally, we improve the message overhead inherent in our initial kb program by giving a counterfactual belief-based program (Halpern and Moses in Distrib Comput 17(2):91–106, 2004) that also solves the global function computation whenever possible, but where agents send messages only when they believe it is necessary to do so. The latter program is shown to be implemented by a number of well-known algorithms for solving leader election.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Joseph Y. Halpern & Sabina Petride

  2. Oracle Corporation, Redwood City, CA, USA

    Sabina Petride

Authors
  1. Joseph Y. Halpern
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  2. Sabina Petride
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph Y. Halpern.

Additional information

Work supported in part by NSF under grants CTC-0208535, ITR-0325453, and IIS-0534064, by ONR under grant N00014-02-1-0455, by the DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program administered by the ONR under grants N00014-01-1-0795 and N00014-04-1-0725, and by AFOSR under grants F49620-02-1-0101 and FA9550-05-1-0055.

This work was done while the author was at Cornell University.

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Halpern, J.Y., Petride, S. A knowledge-based analysis of global function computation. Distrib. Comput. 23, 197–224 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-010-0111-7

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