Robust Emulation of Shared Memory Using Dynamic Quorum-Acknowledged Broadcasts

This paper presents robust emulation of multi-writer/multi-reader registers in message-passing systems using dynamic quorum con gurations. In addition to processor and link failures, this emulation tolerates changes in quorum con gurations, i.e., on-line replacements of one quorum system consisting of read and write quorums with another such system. This work extends the results of Attiya, Bar-Noy and Dolev 1] who showed how to emulate single-writer/multi-reader registers robustly in message-passing systems using majorities. The emulation in this paper is speci ed using a modular two-layer architecture. The lower layer uses unreliable broadcast to disseminate a request from the higher layer to a set of processors, and then to collect responses from a subset of the processors. The subset can be speci ed by a predicate or by using a quorum system. The lower layer then computes a function on the collected responses and returns the result to the higher layer. The broadcast can take advant...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: FTCS
• Authors: Nancy A. Lynch, Alexander A. Shvartsman
• Keywords: Dynamic Quorum, FTCS 1997, Lower Layers, Quorum