Brief announcement: On the robustness of (semi)fast quorum-based implementations of atomic shared memory

Chryssis Georgiou, Nicolas C. Nicolaou, Alexander A. Shvartsman

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Atomic (linearizable) read/write memory is a fundamental abstractions in distributed computing. Following a seminal implementation of atomic memory of Attiya et al.[6], a folklore belief developed that in messaging-passing atomic memory implementations "reads must write." However, work by Dutta et al.[4] established that if the number of readers R is constrained with respect to the number of replicas S and the maximum number of crash-failures t so that R < S/t - 2, then single communication round-trip reads are possible. Such an implementation given in [4] is called fast. Subsequently, Georgiou et al.[3] relaxed the constraint in [4], and proposed semifast implementations with unbounded number of readers, where under realistic conditions most reads need only a single communication round-trip to complete. Their approach groups collections of readers into virtual nodes. Semifast behavior of their algorithm is preserved as long as the number of virtual nodes V is constrained by V < S/t - 2. Quorum systems are well-known mathematical tools that provide means for achieving coordination between processors in distributed systems. Given that the approach of Attiya et al.[6]is readily generalized from majorities to quorums (e.g., [5, 2]), and that the algorithms in [4] and[3] rely on intersections in specific sets of responding servers, one may ask: Can we characterize the conditions enabling fast implementations in a general quorumbased framework? This is what we establish in this work.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationPODC'08
Subtitle of host publicationProceedings of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing
Pages425
Number of pages1
StatePublished - 2008
Externally publishedYes
Event27th ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing - Toronto, ON, Canada
Duration: Aug 18 2008Aug 21 2008

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing

Conference

Conference27th ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityToronto, ON
Period8/18/088/21/08

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Computer Networks and Communications

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