Randomized mutual exclusion in O(log N / log log N) RMRs

d Abstract] Danny Hendler Department of Computer-Science Ben-Gurion University [e-mail] Philipp Woelfel Department of Computer-Science University of Calgary [e-mail] Mutual exclusion is a fundamental distributed coordination problem. Shared-memory mutual exclusion research focuses on local-spin algorithms and uses the remote memory references (RMRs) metric. A recent proof [9] established an (log N) lower bound on the number of RMRs incurred by processes as they enter and exit the critical section, matching an upper bound by Yang and Anderson [18]. Both these bounds apply for algorithms that only use read and write operations. The lower bound of [9] only holds for deterministic algorithms, however; the question of whether randomized mutual exclusion algorithms, using reads and writes only, can achieve sub-logarithmic expected RMR complexity remained open. This paper answers this question in the affirmative. We present two strong-adversary [8] randomized loc...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: PODC
• Authors: Danny Hendler, Philipp Woelfel
• Keywords: Mutual Exclusion Algorithms, Parallel Computing, PODC 2009, Worst-case Rmr Complexity, Worstcase Rmr Complexity