A definition of and linguistic support for partial quiescence

Abstract. The global quiescence of a distributed computation (or distributed termination detection) is an important problem. Some concurrent programming languages and systems provide global quiescence detection as a built-in feature so that programmers do not need to write special synchronization code to detect quiescence. This paper introduces partial quiescence (PQ), which generalizes quiescence detection to a specified part of a distributed computation. Partial quiescence is useful, for example, when two independent concurrent computations that both rely on global quiescence need to be combined into a single program. The paper describes how we have designed and implemented a PQ mechanism within an experimental version of the JR concurrent programming language. Our early results are promising qualitatively and quantitatively.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: CONCURRENCY
• Authors: Billy Yan-Kit Man, Hiu Ning (Angela) Chan, Andrew J. Gallagher, Appu S. Goundan, Aaron W. Keen, Ronald A. Olsson
• Keywords: CONCURRENCY 2008, Global Quiescence, Partial Quiescence, Quiescence Detection