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Adaptive progress: a gracefully-degrading liveness property

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Abstract

We introduce a simple liveness property for shared object implementations that is gracefully degrading depending on the degree of synchrony in each run. This property, called adaptive progress, provides a gradual bridge between obstruction-freedom and wait-freedom in partially-synchronous systems. We show that adaptive progress can be achieved using very weak shared objects. More precisely, every object has an implementation that ensures adaptive progress and uses only abortable registers (which are weaker than safe registers). As part of this work, we present a new leader election abstraction that processes can use to dynamically compete for leadership such that if there is at least one timely process among the current candidates for leadership, then a timely leader is eventually elected among the candidates. We also show that this abstraction can be implemented using abortable registers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, 1065 La Avenida-bldg SVC6, Mountain View, CA, 94043, USA

    Marcos K. Aguilera

  2. University of Toronto, 10 King’s College Road, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G4, Canada

    Sam Toueg

Authors
  1. Marcos K. Aguilera
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  2. Sam Toueg
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Research supported in part by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Aguilera, M.K., Toueg, S. Adaptive progress: a gracefully-degrading liveness property. Distrib. Comput. 22, 303–334 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-010-0106-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-010-0106-4

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