Sharing Memory Robustly in Message-Passing Systems

Emulators that translate algorithms from the shared-memory model to two different message-passing models are presented. Both are achieved by implementing a wait-free, atomic, single-writer multi-reader register in unreliable, asynchronous networks. The two message-passing models considered are a complete network with processor fadures and an arbitrary network with dynamic link failures. These results make it possible to view the shared-memory model as a higher-level language for designing algorithms in asynchronous distributed systems. Any wait-free algorithm based on atomic, single-writer multi-reader registers can be automatically emulated in message-passing systems, provided that at least a majority of the processors are not faulty and remain connected. The overhead introduced by these emulations is polynomial in the number of processors in the system. Immediate new results are obtained by applying the emulators to known shared-memory algorithms. These include, among others, protoco...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1990
• Where: PODC
• Authors: Hagit Attiya, Amotz Bar-Noy, Danny Dolev
• Keywords: Distributed And Parallel Computing, Message-passing Model, Multi-reader Registers, PODC 1990, Single-writer Multi-reader Registers