Weak synchrony models and failure detectors for message passing (k-)set agreement

Martin Biely, Peter Robinson, Ulrich Schmid

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

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

The recent discovery of the weakest failure detector for message passing set agreement has renewed the interest in exploring the border between solvable and unsolvable problems in message passing systems. This paper contributes to this research by introducing two novel system models Manti and M sink with very weak synchrony requirements, where L can be implemented. To the best of our knowledge, they are the first message passing models where set agreement is solvable but consensus is not. We also generalize L by a novel "(n-k)-loneliness" failure detector L(k), which allows to solve k-set agreement but not (k-1)-set agreement. We also present an algorithm that solves k-set agreement with L(k), which is anonymous in that it does not require unique process identifiers. This reveals that L is also the weakest failure detector for anonymous set agreement. Finally, we analyze the relationship between L(k) and other failure detectors, namely the limited scope failure detector Sn-k+1 and the quorum failure detector ∑.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationPrinciples of Distributed Systems - 13th International Conference, OPODIS 2009, Proceedings
Pages285-299
Number of pages15
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Externally publishedYes
Event13th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2009 - Nimes, France
Duration: Dec 15 2009Dec 18 2009

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume5923 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference13th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2009
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityNimes
Period12/15/0912/18/09

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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