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Notes On Distributed Systems

This document contains lecture notes on the theory of distributed systems. It covers topics such as message passing models, algorithms for broadcast, leader election, and agreement problems. It also discusses shared memory models and algorithms for implementing distributed shared memory using message passing. Key concepts covered include asynchronous and synchronous systems, complexity measures, impossibility results, failure detectors, logical clocks, quorum systems, and synchronizers.

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Notes On Distributed Systems

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You are on page 1/ 384

Notes on Theory of Distributed Systems

CS 465/565: Spring 2014

James Aspnes
2014-05-02 18:02

Contents
Table of contents

List of figures

List of tables

xii

List of algorithms

xiii

Preface

xvii

Syllabus

xviii

Lecture schedule

xxi

1 Introduction

Message passing

2 Model
2.1 Basic message-passing model . . . . . . .
2.1.1 Formal details . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.2 Network structure . . . . . . . . .
2.2 Asynchronous systems . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.1 Example: client-server computing .
2.3 Synchronous systems . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4 Complexity measures . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Coordinated attack
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3.1 Formal description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.2 Impossibility proof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
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CONTENTS
3.3

Randomized coordinated attack . . . .

3.3.1 An algorithm . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.2 Why it works . . . . . . . . . .
3.3.3 Almost-matching lower bound .

4 Broadcast and convergecast

4.1 Flooding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.1 Basic algorithm . . . . . . .
4.1.2 Adding parent pointers . .
4.1.3 Termination . . . . . . . . .
4.2 Convergecast . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3 Flooding and convergecast together

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5 Distributed breadth-first search

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5.1 Using explicit distances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.2 Using layering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.3 Using local synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6 Leader election
6.1 Symmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2 Leader election in rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2.1 The Le-Lann-Chang-Roberts algorithm . . . . . . . .
6.2.1.1 Proof of correctness for synchronous executions
6.2.1.2 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2.2 The Hirschberg-Sinclair algorithm . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2.3 Petersons algorithm for the unidirectional ring . . . .
6.2.4 A simple randomized O(n log n)-message algorithm . .
6.3 Leader election in general networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.4 Lower bounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.4.1 Lower bound on asynchronous message complexity . .
6.4.2 Lower bound for comparison-based algorithms . . . .

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7 Synchronous agreement
7.1 Problem definition . . . . . . . . .
7.2 Lower bound on rounds . . . . . .
7.3 Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.3.1 Flooding . . . . . . . . . . .
7.4 Exponential information gathering
7.4.1 Basic invariants . . . . . . .
7.4.2 Stronger facts . . . . . . . .

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7.4.3 The payoff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7.4.4 The real payoff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Variants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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8 Byzantine agreement
8.1 Lower bounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.1 Minimum number of rounds . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.2 Minimum number of processes . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.3 Minimum connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1.4 Weak Byzantine agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.2 Upper bounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.2.1 Exponential information gathering gets n = 3f + 1
8.2.1.1 Proof of correctness . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.2.2 Phase king gets constant-size messages . . . . . . .
8.2.2.1 The algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.2.2.2 Proof of correctness . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.2.2.3 Performance of phase king . . . . . . . .

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9 Impossibility of asynchronous agreement

9.1 Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.2 Failures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.3 Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.4 Bivalence and univalence . . . . . . . . . . .
9.5 Existence of an initial bivalent configuration
9.6 Staying in a bivalent configuration . . . . .
9.7 Generalization to other models . . . . . . .

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10 Paxos
10.1 Motivation: replicated state machines .
10.2 The Paxos algorithm . . . . . . . . . . .
10.3 Informal analysis: how information flows
10.4 Safety properties . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.5 Learning the results . . . . . . . . . . .
10.6 Liveness properties . . . . . . . . . . . .

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11 Failure detectors
11.1 How to build a failure detector .
11.2 Classification of failure detectors
11.2.1 Degrees of completeness .
11.2.2 Degrees of accuracy . . .

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13 Synchronizers
13.1 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.2 Implementations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.2.1 The alpha synchronizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.2.2 The beta synchronizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.2.3 The gamma synchronizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.3 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.4 Limitations of synchronizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.4.1 Impossibility with crash failures . . . . . . . . . .
13.4.2 Unavoidable slowdown with global synchronization
13.5 Outline of the proof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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14 Quorum systems
14.1 Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14.2 Simple quorum systems . . .
14.3 Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14.4 Paths system . . . . . . . . .
14.5 Byzantine quorum systems .
14.6 Probabilistic quorum systems
14.6.1 Example . . . . . . . .

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11.3
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11.2.3 Boosting completeness . . . . .

11.2.4 Failure detector classes . . . . .
Consensus with S . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.3.1 Proof of correctness . . . . . .
Consensus with S and f < n/2 . . .
11.4.1 Proof of correctness . . . . . .
f < n/2 is still required even with P
Relationships among the classes . . . .

12 Logical clocks
12.1 Causal ordering . . . . . . . . . .
12.2 Implementations . . . . . . . . .
12.2.1 Lamport clock . . . . . .
12.2.2 Neiger-Toueg-Welch clock
12.2.3 Vector clocks . . . . . . .
12.3 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.3.1 Consistent snapshots . . .
12.3.1.1 Property testing
12.3.2 Replicated state machines

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14.6.2 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

14.7 Signed quorum systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Shared memory

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15 Model
15.1 Atomic registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.2 Single-writer versus multi-writer registers
15.3 Fairness and crashes . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.4 Concurrent executions . . . . . . . . . . .
15.5 Consistency properties . . . . . . . . . . .
15.6 Complexity measures . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.7 Fancier registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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16 Distributed shared memory

16.1 Message passing from shared memory
16.2 The Attiya-Bar-Noy-Dolev algorithm .
16.3 Proof of linearizability . . . . . . . . .
16.4 Proof that f < n/2 is necessary . . . .
16.5 Multiple writers . . . . . . . . . . . . .
16.6 Other operations . . . . . . . . . . . .

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17 Mutual exclusion
17.1 The problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17.2 Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17.3 Mutual exclusion using strong primitives . . . . . . . .
17.3.1 Test and set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17.3.2 A lockout-free algorithm using an atomic queue
17.3.2.1 Reducing space complexity . . . . . .
17.4 Mutual exclusion using only atomic registers . . . . .
17.4.1 Petersons tournament algorithm . . . . . . . .
17.4.1.1 Correctness of Petersons protocol . .
17.4.1.2 Generalization to n processes . . . . .
17.4.2 Fast mutual exclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17.4.3 Lamports Bakery algorithm . . . . . . . . . .
17.4.4 Lower bound on the number of registers . . . .
17.5 RMR complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17.5.1 Cache-coherence vs. distributed shared memory
17.5.2 RMR complexity of Petersons algorithm . . .

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CONTENTS

17.5.3 Mutual exclusion in the DSM model . . . . . . . . . . 137

17.5.4 Lower bounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
18 The wait-free hierarchy
18.1 Classification by consensus number . . . . . . . . . .
18.1.1 Level 1: registers etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18.1.2 Level 2: interfering RMW objects etc. . . . .
18.1.3 Level : objects where first write wins . . .
18.1.4 Level 2m 2: simultaneous m-register write .
18.1.4.1 Matching impossibility result . . . .
18.1.5 Level m: m-process consensus objects . . . .
18.2 Universality of consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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19 Atomic snapshots
19.1 The basic trick: two identical collects equals a snapshot
19.2 The Gang of Six algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.2.1 Linearizability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.2.2 Using bounded registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.3 Faster snapshots using lattice agreement . . . . . . . . .
19.3.1 Lattice agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.3.2 Connection to vector clocks . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.3.3 The full reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.3.4 Why this works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.3.5 Implementing lattice agreement . . . . . . . . . .
19.4 Practical snapshots using LL/SC . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.4.1 Details of the single-scanner snapshot . . . . . .
19.4.2 Extension to multiple scanners . . . . . . . . . .
19.5 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.5.1 Multi-writer registers from single-writer registers
19.5.2 Counters and accumulators . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.5.3 Resilient snapshot objects . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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20 Lower bounds on perturbable objects

21 Restricted-use objects
21.1 Implementing bounded max
21.2 Encoding the set of values .
21.3 Unbounded max registers .
21.4 Lower bound . . . . . . . .
21.5 Max-register snapshots . . .

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21.5.1 Linearizability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

21.5.2 Application to standard snapshots . . . . . . . . . . . 183
22 Common2
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22.1 Test-and-set and swap for two processes . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
22.2 Building n-process TAS from 2-process TAS . . . . . . . . . . 187
22.3 Single-use swap objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
23 Randomized consensus and test-and-set
23.1 Role of the adversary in randomized algorithms . . .
23.2 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.3 Reduction to simpler primitives . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.3.1 Adopt-commit objects . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.3.2 Conciliators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.4 Implementing an adopt-commit object . . . . . . . .
23.5 A one-register conciliator for an oblivious adversary
23.6 Sifters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.6.1 Test-and-set using sifters . . . . . . . . . . .
23.6.2 Consensus using sifters . . . . . . . . . . . . .
23.7 O(log n) Randomized test-and-set . . . . . . . . . .
23.8 Space bounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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24 Renaming
24.1 Renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24.2 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24.3 Order-preserving renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24.4 Deterministic renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24.4.1 Wait-free renaming with 2n 1 names . . . .
24.4.2 Long-lived renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24.4.3 Renaming without snapshots . . . . . . . . .
24.4.3.1 Splitters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24.4.3.2 Splitters in a grid . . . . . . . . . .
24.4.4 Getting to 2n 1 names in polynomial space
24.4.5 Renaming with test-and-set . . . . . . . . . .
24.5 Randomized renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24.5.1 Randomized splitters . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24.5.2 Randomized test-and-set plus sampling . . .
24.5.3 Renaming with sorting networks . . . . . . .
24.5.3.1 Sorting networks . . . . . . . . . . .
24.5.3.2 Renaming networks . . . . . . . . .

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CONTENTS

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24.5.4 Randomized loose renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

25 Software transactional memory
25.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . .
25.2 Basic approaches . . . . . . . . . .
25.3 Implementing multi-word RMW .
25.3.1 Overlapping LL/SC . . . .
25.3.2 Representing a transaction
25.3.3 Executing a transaction . .
25.3.4 Proof of linearizability . . .
25.3.5 Proof of non-blockingness .
25.4 Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . .
25.5 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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26 Obstruction-freedom
26.1 Why build obstruction-free algorithms? . . .
26.2 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
26.2.1 Lock-free implementations . . . . . . .
26.2.2 Double-collect snapshots . . . . . . . .
26.2.3 Software transactional memory . . . .
26.2.4 Obstruction-free test-and-set . . . . .
26.2.5 An obstruction-free deque . . . . . . .
26.3 Boosting obstruction-freedom to wait-freedom
26.3.1 Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
26.4 Lower bounds for lock-free protocols . . . . .
26.4.1 Contention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
26.4.2 The class G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
26.4.3 The lower bound proof . . . . . . . . .
26.4.4 Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
26.4.5 More lower bounds . . . . . . . . . . .
26.5 Practical considerations . . . . . . . . . . . .

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27 BG
27.1
27.2
27.3
27.4
27.5
27.6

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simulation
Safe agreement . . . . . . . . .
The basic simulation algorithm
Effect of failures . . . . . . . .
Inputs and outputs . . . . . . .
Correctness of the simulation .
BG simulation and consensus .

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CONTENTS
28 Topological methods
28.1 Basic idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28.2 k-set agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28.3 Representing distributed computations using topology
28.3.1 Simplicial complexes and process states . . . .
28.3.2 Subdivisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28.4 Impossibility of k-set agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28.5 Simplicial maps and specifications . . . . . . . . . . .
28.5.1 Mapping inputs to outputs . . . . . . . . . . .
28.6 The asynchronous computability theorem . . . . . . .
28.6.1 The participating set protocol . . . . . . . . . .
28.7 Proving impossibility results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28.7.1 k-connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
28.7.2 Impossibility proofs for specific problems . . .

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29 Approximate agreement
273
29.1 Algorithms for approximate agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
29.2 Lower bound on step complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

Appendix
A Assignments
A.1 Assignment 1: due Wednesday, 2014-01-29, at 5:00pm
A.1.1 Counting evil processes . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A.1.2 Avoiding expensive processes . . . . . . . . . .
A.2 Assignment 2: due Wednesday, 2014-02-12, at 5:00pm
A.2.1 Synchronous agreement with weak failures . . .
A.2.2 Byzantine agreement with contiguous faults . .
A.3 Assignment 3: due Wednesday, 2014-02-26, at 5:00pm
A.3.1 Among the elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A.3.2 Failure detectors on the cheap . . . . . . . . . .
A.4 Assignment 4: due Wednesday, 2014-03-26, at 5:00pm
A.4.1 A global synchronizer with a global clock . . .
A.4.2 A message-passing counter . . . . . . . . . . .
A.5 Assignment 5: due Wednesday, 2014-04-09, at 5:00pm
A.5.1 A concurrency detector . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A.5.2 Two-writer sticky bits . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A.6 Assignment 6: due Wednesday, 2014-04-23, at 5:00pm
A.6.1 A rotate register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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CONTENTS
A.6.2 A randomized two-process test-and-set
A.7 CS465/CS565 Final Exam, May 2nd, 2014 . .
A.7.1 Maxima (20 points) . . . . . . . . . .
A.7.2 Historyless objects (20 points) . . . .
A.7.3 Hams (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . . .
A.7.4 Mutexes (20 points) . . . . . . . . . .

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B Sample assignments from Fall 2011

B.1 Assignment 1: due Wednesday, 2011-09-28, at 17:00 . .
B.1.1 Anonymous algorithms on a torus . . . . . . . .
B.1.2 Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
B.1.3 Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
B.2 Assignment 2: due Wednesday, 2011-11-02, at 17:00 . .
B.2.1 Consensus with delivery notifications . . . . . . .
B.2.2 A circular failure detector . . . . . . . . . . . . .
B.2.3 An odd problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
B.3 Assignment 3: due Friday, 2011-12-02, at 17:00 . . . . .
B.3.1 A restricted queue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
B.3.2 Writable fetch-and-increment . . . . . . . . . . .
B.3.3 A box object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
B.4 CS465/CS565 Final Exam, December 12th, 2011 . . . .
B.4.1 Lockable registers (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . .
B.4.2 Byzantine timestamps (20 points) . . . . . . . .
B.4.3 Failure detectors and k-set agreement (20 points)
B.4.4 A set data structure (20 points) . . . . . . . . . .

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C Additional sample final exams

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C.1 CS425/CS525 Final Exam, December 15th, 2005 . . . . . . . 313
C.1.1 Consensus by attrition (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . . 313
C.1.2 Long-distance agreement (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . 314
C.1.3 Mutex appendages (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
C.2 CS425/CS525 Final Exam, May 8th, 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . 317
C.2.1 Message passing without failures (20 points) . . . . . . 317
C.2.2 A ring buffer (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
C.2.3 Leader election on a torus (20 points) . . . . . . . . . 318
C.2.4 An overlay network (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
C.3 CS425/CS525 Final Exam, May 10th, 2010 . . . . . . . . . . 320
C.3.1 Anti-consensus (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
C.3.2 Odd or even (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
C.3.3 Atomic snapshot arrays using message-passing (20 points)321

CONTENTS

C.3.4 Priority queues (20 points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

D I/O automata
D.1 Low-level view: I/O automata . . . . .
D.1.1 Enabled actions . . . . . . . . .
D.1.2 Executions, fairness, and traces
D.1.3 Composition of automata . . .
D.1.4 Hiding actions . . . . . . . . .
D.1.5 Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . .
D.1.6 Specifying an automaton . . .
D.2 High-level view: traces . . . . . . . . .
D.2.1 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . .
D.2.2 Types of trace properties . . .
D.2.2.1 Safety properties . . .
D.2.2.2 Liveness properties . .
D.2.2.3 Other properties . . .
D.2.3 Compositional arguments . . .
D.2.3.1 Example . . . . . . .
D.2.4 Simulation arguments . . . . .
D.2.4.1 Example . . . . . . .

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Bibliography

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Index

351

List of Figures
6.1

Labels in the bit-reversal ring with n = 32 . . . . . . . . . . .

8.1
8.2

Synthetic execution for Byzantine agreement lower bound . .

Synthetic execution for Byzantine agreement connectivity . .

51
52

11.1 Failure detector classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

14.1 Figure 2 from [NW98] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

21.1 Snapshot from max arrays [AACHE12] . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
24.1 A 6 6 Moir-Anderson grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
24.2 Path through a Moir-Anderson grid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
24.3 A sorting network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
28.1
28.2
28.3
28.4

Subdivision corresponding to one round of immediate snapshot262

Subdivision corresponding to two rounds of immediate snapshot263
An attempt at 2-set agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Output complex for renaming with n = 3, m = 4 . . . . . . . 272

A.1 Connected Byzantine nodes take over half a cut . . . . . . . . 284

xii

List of Tables
18.1 Position of various types in the wait-free hierarchy . . . . . . 142

xiii

List of Algorithms
2.1
2.2

Client-server computation: client code . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Client-server computation: server code . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4

Basic flooding algorithm . . . . . . .

Flooding with parent pointers . . . .
Convergecast . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Flooding and convergecast combined .

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22
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5.1

AsynchBFS algorithm (from [Lyn96]) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6.1
6.2

LCR leader election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Petersons leader-election algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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8.1

Byzantine agreement: phase king . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11.1 Boosting completeness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11.2 Consensus with a strong failure detector . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.3 Reliable broadcast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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17.1
17.2
17.3
17.4
17.5
17.6
17.7

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Mutual exclusion using test-and-set . . .

Mutual exclusion using a queue . . . . .
Mutual exclusion using read-modify-write
Petersons mutual exclusion algorithm for
Implementation of a splitter . . . . . . .
Lamports Bakery algorithm . . . . . . .
Yang-Anderson mutex for two processes .

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18.1 Determining the winner of a race between 2-register writes . . 147

18.2 A universal construction based on consensus . . . . . . . . . . 151
19.1 Snapshot of [AAD+ 93] using unbounded registers . . . . . . . 155
xiv

LIST OF ALGORITHMS
19.2
19.3
19.4
19.5
19.6

Lattice agreement snapshot . . . . . .

Update for lattice agreement snapshot
Increasing set data structure . . . . .
Single-scanner snapshot: scan . . . .
Single-scanner snapshot: update . . .

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21.1 Max register read operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

21.2 Max register write operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
21.3 Recursive construction of a 2-component max array . . . . . . 182
22.1
22.2
22.3
22.4
22.5

Building 2-process TAS from 2-process consensus .

Two-process one-shot swap from TAS . . . . . . .
Tournament algorithm with gate . . . . . . . . . .
Trap implementation from [AWW93] . . . . . . .
Single-use swap from [AWW93] . . . . . . . . . . .

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23.1
23.2
23.3
23.4
23.5
23.6
23.7

Consensus using adopt-commit . . . . . . . . .

A 2-valued adopt-commit object . . . . . . . .
Impatient first-mover conciliator from [Asp12b]
A sifter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Test-and-set in O(log log n) expected time . . .
Sifting conciliator (from [Asp12a]) . . . . . . .
Giakkoupis-Woelfel sifter [GW12a] . . . . . . .

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24.1 Wait-free deterministic renaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

24.2 Releasing a name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
24.3 Implementation of a splitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
25.1 Overlapping LL/SC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
26.1 Obstruction-free 2-process test-and-set . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
26.2 Obstruction-free deque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
26.3 Obstruction-freedom booster from [FLMS05] . . . . . . . . . . 237
27.1 Safe agreement (adapted from [BGLR01]) . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
28.1 Participating set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
29.1 Approximate agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
A.1 Counter algorithm for Problem A.4.2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
A.2 Two-process consensus using the object from Problem A.5.1 . . 288

LIST OF ALGORITHMS

xvi

A.3 Implementation of a rotate register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

A.4 Randomized two-process test-and-set for A.6.2 . . . . . . . . . 292
A.5 Mutex using a swap object and register . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
B.1
B.2
B.3
B.4

Resettable fetch-and-increment . . . . . . . . . . . .
Consensus using a lockable register . . . . . . . . .
Timestamps with n 3 and one Byzantine process .
Counter from set object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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D.1 Spambot as an I/O automaton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328

Preface
These are notes for the Spring 2014 semester version of the Yale course CPSC
465/565 Theory of Distributed Systems. This document also incorporates
the lecture schedule and assignments, as well as some sample assignments
from previous semesters. Because this is a work in progress, it will be
updated frequently over the course of the semester.
Notes from Fall 2011 can be found at http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/
aspnes/classes/469/notes-2011.pdf.
Notes from earlier semesters can be found at http://pine.cs.yale.
edu/pinewiki/465/.
Much of the structure of the course follows the textbook, Attiya and
Welchs Distributed Computing [AW04], with some topics based on Lynchs
Distributed Algorithms [Lyn96] and additional readings from the research
literature. In most cases youll find these materials contain much more
detail than what is presented here, so it is better to consider this document
a supplement to them than to treat it as your primary source of information.

Acknowledgments
Many parts of these notes were improved by feedback from students taking
various versions of this course. Id like to thank Mike Marmar and Hao Pan
in particular for suggesting improvements to some of the posted solutions.
Id also like to apologize to the many other students who should be thanked
here but whose names I didnt keep track of in the past.

xvii

Syllabus
Description
Models of asynchronous distributed computing systems. Fundamental concepts of concurrency and synchronization, communication, reliability, topological and geometric constraints, time and space complexity, and distributed
algorithms.

Meeting times
Lectures are MW 11:3512:50 in AKW 200.

On-line course information

The lecture schedule, course notes, and all assignments can be found in a single gigantic PDF file at http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/classes/
465/notes.pdf. You should probably bookmark this file, as it will be updated frequently.

Staff
The instructor for the course is James Aspnes. Office: AKW 401. Email:
james.aspnes@gmail.com. URL: http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/.
The teaching fellow is Ennan Zhai. Office: AKW 404. Email: ennan.zhai@yale.edu.
Office hours can be found in the course calendar at Google Calendar,
which can also be reached through James Aspness web page.

xviii

SYLLABUS

xix

Textbook
Hagit Attiya and Jennifer Welch, Distributed Computing: Fundamentals,
Simulations, and Advanced Topics, second edition. Wiley, 2004. QA76.9.D5
A75X 2004 (LC). ISBN 0471453242.
On-line version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/0471478210. (This may
not work outside Yale.)
Errata: http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~hagit/DC/2nd-errata.html.

Reserved books at Bass Library

Nancy A. Lynch, Distributed Algorithms. Morgan Kaufmann, 1996. ISBN
1558603484. QA76.9 D5 L963X 1996 (LC). Definitive textbook on formal
analysis of distributed systems.
Ajay D. Kshemkalyani and Mukesh Singhal. Distributed Computing:
Principles, Algorithms, and Systems. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
QA76.9.D5 K74 2008 (LC). ISBN 9780521876346. A practical manual of
algorithms with an emphasis on message-passing models.

Course requirements
Six homework assignments (60% of the semester grade) plus a final exam
(40%).

Use of outside help

Students are free to discuss homework problems and course material with
each other, and to consult with the instructor or a TA. Solutions handed in,
however, should be the students own work. If a student benefits substantially from hints or solutions received from fellow students or from outside
sources, then the student should hand in their solution but acknowledge
the outside sources, and we will apportion credit accordingly. Using outside
resources in solving a problem is acceptable but plagiarism is not.

Clarifications for homework assignments

From time to time, ambiguities and errors may creep into homework assignments. Questions about the interpretation of homework assignments should

SYLLABUS

be sent to the instructor at james.aspnes@gmail.com. Clarifications will

appear in an updated version of the assignment.

Late assignments
Late assignments will not be accepted without a Deans Excuse.

Academic integrity statement

The graduate school asks that the following statement be included in all
graduate course syllabi:
Academic integrity is a core institutional value at Yale. It
means, among other things, truth in presentation, diligence and
precision in citing works and ideas we have used, and acknowledging our collaborations with others. In view of our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of academic integrity,
the Graduate School Code of Conduct specifically prohibits the
following forms of behavior: cheating on examinations, problem
sets and all other forms of assessment; falsification and/or fabrication of data; plagiarism, that is, the failure in a dissertation,
essay or other written exercise to acknowledge ideas, research, or
language taken from others; and multiple submission of the same
work without obtaining explicit written permission from both instructors before the material is submitted. Students found guilty
of violations of academic integrity are subject to one or more of
the following penalties: written reprimand, probation, suspension (noted on a students transcript) or dismissal (noted on a
students transcript).

Lecture schedule
As always, the future is uncertain, so you should take parts of the schedule
that havent happened yet with a grain of salt. Readings refer to chapters
or sections in the course notes, except for those specified as in AW, which
refer to the course textbook Attiya and Welch [AW04].
2014-01-13 Distributed systems vs. classical and parallel systems. Nondeterminism and the adversary. Message-passing vs. shared-memory.
Basic message-passing model: states, outbufs, inbufs; computation and
delivery events; executions. Synchrony and asynchrony. Fairness and
admissible executions. Performance measures. Proof of correctness
for a simple client-server interaction. Impossibility proof for the Two
Generals problem using indistinguishability. Sketch of algorithm using randomization. Readings: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 except
3.3.3; AW Chapter 1.
2014-01-15 Flooding and convergecast algorithms. A simple distributed
breadth-first search protocol. Readings: Chapter 4, 5.1; AW Chapter
2
2014-01-17 In AKW 000 for this lecture only. More distributed
breadth-first search. Start of leader election. Readings: Rest of Chapter 5, 6.16.2; AW 3.13.3.2, 3.4.1.1.
2014-01-22 More leader election algorithms. Lower bounds on message
complexity. Readings: Rest of Chapter 6, AW rest of 3.3 and 3.4.
2014-01-27 Synchronous agreement: lower bounds and algorithms for the
crash-failure model. Impossibility of Byzantine agreement with n
3f . Readings: Chapter 7, 8.1.2; AW 5.1, 5.2.15.2.3.
2014-01-29 More Byzantine agreement: additional impossibility results,
the exponential information gathering algorithm. Readings: 8.1.3
8.2.1; AW 5.2.4.
xxi

LECTURE SCHEDULE

xxii

2014-02-03 Phase king algorithm for Byzantine agreement. Bivalence arguments and the Fischer-Lynch-Paterson impossibility proof for asynchronous agreement with one crash failure. Doing asynchronous agreement anyway using Paxos. Readings: 8.2.2, Chapter 9, Chapter 10;
AW 5.2.55.3, [Lam01].
2014-02-05 No lecture due to weather.
2014-02-10 Failure detectors: classification of failure detectors, consensus
using S and S. Readings: Chapter 11 up through 11.4; [CT96].
2014-02-12 Impossibility results for failure detectors. Logical clocks: Lamport clocks, Neiger-Toueg-Welch clocks, Readings: 11.511.6, Chapter 12 through 12.2.2; AW 6.1.16.1.2.
2014-02-17 More logical clocks: vector clocks, applications. Synchronizers
and the session problem. Readings: 12.2.3 and 12.3, Chapter 13;
AW 6.1.3 and 6.2, Chapter 11.
2014-02-19 Shared memory and distributed shared memory. Readings:
Chapter 15, Chapter 16; AW 9.1 and 9.3.
2014-02-24 Quorum systems. Readings: Chapter 14; [NW98].
2014-02-26 Start of mutual exclusion: problem definition, algorithms for
strong primitives, Petersons tournament algorithm. A bit about splitters and fast mutex, although I ran over before getting to the punchline
(see 17.4.2). Readings: Chapter 17 through 17.4.2; AW 4.14.3.2,
4.4.24.4.3, 4.4.5.
2014-03-03 More mutex: return of the splitters, Lamports bakery algorithm, Burns-Lynch lower bound on space, RMR complexity. Readings: 17.4.217.5.2. AW 4.4.4, [YA95].
2014-03-05 End of mutex: The Yang-Anderson algorithm for low RMR
mutex in the distributed shared memory model, a few more comments
on lower bounds. Wait-free computation and universality of consensus. Readings: 17.5.3, 17.5.4, and 18.2, also a bit of the start of
Chapter 18; [Her91b].
2014-03-24 The wait-free hierarchy: consensus number of various objects.
Readings: rest of Chapter 18 (except 18.1.4).

LECTURE SCHEDULE

xxiii

2014-03-26 Consensus number of simultaneous m-register write. Atomic

snapshots of shared memory: definition, the Afek et al. algorithm,
applications, reduction to lattice agreement. Readings: 18.1.4, Chapter 19 through 19.2.1, 19.5, 19.3.119.3.3; AW 10.3, [AHR95].
2014-03-31 Implementing lattice agreement. Perturbable objects and the
Jayanti-Tan-Toueg lower bound. How bounded max registers escape
the bound. Readings: 19.3.5, Chapter 20, 21.1. [IMCT94, JTT00,
AAC09].
2014-04-02 More on restricted-use objects: max register variants, lower
bounds for max registers, max arrays and restricted-use snapshots with
polylogarithmic cost. How 2-process test-and-set (and by extension
any object with consensus number 2) implements all historyless objects. Readings: rest of Chapter 21, Chapter 22; [AAC09, AACHE12,
AWW93].
2014-04-07 Randomized consensus: adversaries, adopt-commits, and conciliators. Reaching agreement in the Bracha-Rachman (for adaptive
adversary) and Chor-Israeli-Li (for weak adversary) algorithms. Readings: Chapter 23 through 23.5.
2014-04-09 Faster algorithms for randomized test-and-set. Splitters as
weak test-and-set algorithms. Adaptive algorithms and RatRace. Readings: 23.6 through 23.6.1, 24.4.3.1, 24.5.2; [AAG+ 10, AA11, GW12a].
2014-04-14 More randomized consensus: O(log log n)-time consensus for
an oblivious adversary. Renaming: definition, renaming to 2n 1
names using snapshots. Readings: 23.6.2, 24.1, 24.2, and 24.4.1;
[Asp12a], AW 16.3.1.
2014-04-16 More renaming: renaming using splitters, randomized renaming. Readings: 24.4.324.5; [MA95, AAGG11, AAGW13].
2014-04-21 Solvability of asynchronous decision tasks: BG simulation of
n-process executions with f failures with f + 1-process wait-free executions, start of topological methods. Readings: Chapter 27, 28.3.1;
[BG97].
2014-04-23 Rest of topological methods: iterated immediate snapshots,
subdivisions, impossibility of k-set agreement with k failures, how renaming is like trying to turn a sphere into a torus. Readings: rest of

LECTURE SCHEDULE

xxiv

Chapter 28; AW 16.1 if you want to see a non-topological proof of the

k-set agreement result, [HS99] for more of the topological approach.
2014-05-02 The final exam was given Friday, May 2nd, 2014, starting at
2:00 pm in AKW 200. It was a closed-book exam covering all material
discussed during the semester. See Appendix A.7 for sample solutions.

Chapter 1

Introduction
Distributed computing systems are characterized by their structure: a
typical distributed computing system will consist of some large number of
interacting devices that each run their own programs but that are affected by
receiving messages or observing shared-memory updates from other devices.
Examples of distributed computing systems range from simple systems in
which a single client talks to a single server to huge amorphous networks
like the Internet as a whole.
As distributed systems get larger, it becomes harder and harder to predict or even understand their behavior. Part of the reason for this is that we
as programmers have not yet developed the kind of tools for managing complexity (like subroutines or objects with narrow interfaces, or even simple
structured programming mechanisms like loops or if/then statements) that
are standard in sequential programming. Part of the reason is that large
distributed systems bring with them large amounts of inherent nondeterminismunpredictable events like delays in message arrivals, the sudden
failure of components, or in extreme cases the nefarious actions of faulty or
malicious machines opposed to the goals of the system as a whole. Because
of the unpredictability and scale of large distributed systems, it can often
be difficult to test or simulate them adequately. Thus there is a need for
theoretical tools that allow us to prove properties of these systems that will
let us use them with confidence.
The first task of any theory of distributed systems is modeling: defining a
mathematical structure that abstracts out all relevant properties of a large
distributed system. There are many foundational models for distributed
systems, but for this class we will follow [AW04] and use simple automatonbased models. Here we think of the system as a whole as passing from one

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

global state or configuration to another in response to events, e.g. local

computation at some processor, an operation on shared memory, or the
delivery of a message by the network. The details of the model will depend
on what kind of system we are trying to represent:
Message passing models (which we will cover in Part I) correspond
to systems where processes communicate by sending messages through
a network. In synchronous message-passing, every process sends
out messages at time t that are delivered at time t + 1, at which point
more messages are sent out that are delivered at time t + 2, and so
on: the whole system runs in lockstep, marching forward in perfect
synchrony. Such systems are difficult to build when the components
become too numerous or too widely dispersed, but they are often easier
to analyze than asynchronous systems, where messages are delivered
eventually after some unknown delay. Variants on these models include
semi-synchronous systems, where message delays are unpredictable
but bounded, and various sorts of timed systems. Further variations
come from restricting which processes can communicate with which
others, by allowing various sorts of failures (crash failures that stop
a process dead, Byzantine failures that turn a process evil, or omission failures that drop messages in transit), oron the helpful side
by supplying additional tools like failure detectors (Chapter 11) or
randomization (Chapter 23).
Shared-memory models (Part II) correspond to systems where processes communicate by executing operations on shared objects that in
the simplest case are typically simple memory cells supporting read
and write operations (), but which could be more complex hardware
primitives like compare-and-swap (18.1.3), load-linked/storeconditional (18.1.3), atomic queues, or more exotic objects from
the seldom-visited theoretical depths. Practical shared-memory systems may be implemented as distributed shared-memory (Chapter 16) on top of a message-passing system in various ways.
Like message-passing systems, shared-memory systems must also deal
with issues of asynchrony and failures, both in the processes and in
the shared objects.
Other specialized models emphasize particular details of distributed
systems, such as the labeled-graph models used for analyzing routing
or the topological models used to represent some specialized agreement
problems (see Chapter 28.

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

Well see many of these at some point in this course, and examine which
of them can simulate each other under various conditions.
Properties we might want to prove about a model include:
Safety properties, of the form nothing bad ever happens or more
precisely there are no bad reachable states of the system. These
include things like at most one of the traffic lights at the intersection
of Busy and Main is ever green. Such properties are typically proved
using invariants, properties of the state of the system that are true
initially and that are preserved by all transitions; this is essentially a
disguised induction proof.
Liveness properties, of the form something good eventually happens. An example might be my email is eventually either delivered or
returned to me. These are not properties of particular states (I might
unhappily await the eventual delivery of my email for decades without violating the liveness property just described), but of executions,
where the property must hold starting at some finite time. Liveness
properties are generally proved either from other liveness properties
(e.g., all messages in this message-passing system are eventually delivered) or from a combination of such properties and some sort of
timer argument where some progress metric improves with every transition and guarantees the desirable state when it reaches some bound
(also a disguised induction proof).
Fairness properties are a strong kind of liveness property of the form
something good eventually happens to everybody. Such properties
exclude starvation, a situation where most of the kids are happily
chowing down at the orphanage (some kid eventually eats something
is a liveness property) but poor Oliver Twist is dying for lack of gruel
in the corner.
Simulations show how to build one kind of system from another, such
as a reliable message-passing system built on top of an unreliable system (TCP), a shared-memory system built on top of a message-passing
system (distributed shared-memory), or a synchronous system build
on top of an asynchronous system (synchronizerssee Chapter 13).
Impossibility results describe things we cant do. For example, the
classic Two Generals impossibility result (Chapter 3) says that its
impossible to guarantee agreement between two processes across an

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

unreliable message-passing channel if even a single message can be

lost. Other results characterize what problems can be solved if various
fractions of the processes are unreliable, or if asynchrony makes timing
assumptions impossible. These results, and similar lower bounds that
describe things we cant do quickly, include some of the most technically sophisticated results in distributed computing. They stand in
contrast to the situation with sequential computing, where the reliability and predictability of the underlying hardware makes proving
lower bounds extremely difficult.
There are some basic proof techniques that we will see over and over
again in distributed computing.
For lower bound and impossibility proofs, the main tool is an indistinguishability argument. Here we construct two (or more) executions
in which some process has the same input and thus behaves the same way,
regardless of what algorithm it is running. This exploitation of processs
ignorance is what makes impossibility results possible in distributed computing despite being notoriously difficult in most areas of computer science.1
For safety properties, statements that some bad outcome never occurs,
the main proof technique is to construct an invariant. An invariant is essentially an induction hypothesis on reachable configurations of the system;
an invariant proof shows that the invariant holds in all initial configurations,
and that if it holds in some configuration, it holds in any configuration that
is reachable in one step.
Induction is also useful for proving termination and liveness properties, statements that some good outcome occurs after a bounded amount of
time. Here we typically structure the induction hypothesis as a progress
measure, showing that some sort of partial progress holds by a particular
time, with the full guarantee implied after the time bound is reached.

1
An exception might be lower bounds for data structures, which also rely on a processs
ignorance.

Part I

Message passing

Chapter 2

Model
See [AW04, Chapter 2] for details. Well just give the basic overview here.

2.1

Basic message-passing model

We have a collection of n processes p1 . . . p2 , each of which has a state

consisting of a state from from state set Qi , together with an inbuf and outbuf component representing messages available for delivery and messages
posted to be sent, respectively. Messages are point-to-point, with a single
sender and recipient: if you want broadcast, you have to pay for it. A configuration of the system consists of a vector of states, one for each process.
The configuration of the system is updated by an event, which is either
a delivery event (a message is moved from some processs outbuf to the
appropriate processs inbuf) or a computation event (some process updates its state based on the current value of its inbuf and state components,
possibly adding new messages to its outbuf). An execution segment is a
sequence of alternating configurations and events C0 , 1 , C1 , 2 , . . . , in which
each triple Ci i+1 Ci+1 is consistent with the transition rules for the event
i+1 (see [AW04, Chapter 2] or the discussion below for more details on
this) and the last element of the sequence (if any) is a configuration. If the
first configuration C0 is an initial configuration of the system, we have an
execution. A schedule is an execution with the configurations removed.

2.1.1

Formal details

Each process i has, in addition to its state statei , a variable inbuf i [j] for each
process j it can receive messages from and outbuf i [j] for each process j it

CHAPTER 2. MODEL

can send messages to. We assume each process has a transition function
that maps tuples consisting of the inbuf values and the current state to
a new state plus zero or one messages to be added to each outbuf (note
that this means that the processs behavior cant depend on which of its
previous messages have been delivered or not). A computation event comp(i)
applies the transition function for i, emptying out all of is inbuf variables,
updating its state, and adding any outgoing messages to is outbuf variables.
A delivery event del(i, j, m) moves message m from outbuf i [j] to inbuf j [i].
Some implicit features in this definition:
A process cant tell when its outgoing messages are delivered, because
the outbuf i variables arent included in the accessible state used as
input to the transition function.
Processes are deterministic: The next action of each process depends
only on its current state, and not on extrinsic variables like the phase
of the moon, coin-flips, etc. We may wish to relax this condition later
by allowing coin-flips; to do so, we will need to extend the model to
incorporate probabilities.
Processes must process all incoming messages at once. This is not as
severe a restriction as one might think, because we can always have
the first comp(i) event move all incoming messages to buffers in the
statei variable, and process messages sequentially during subsequent
comp(i) events.
It is possible to determine the accessible state of a process by looking
only at events that involve that process. Specifically, given a schedule
S, define the restriction S|i to be the subsequence consisting of all
comp(i) and del(j, i, m) events (ranging over all possible j and m).
Since these are the only events that affect the accessible state of i,
and only the accessible state of i is needed to apply the transition
function, we can compute the accessible state of i looking only at
S|i. In particular, this means that i will have the same accessible
state after any two schedules S and S 0 where S|i = S 0 |i, and thus
will take the same actions in both schedules. This is the basis for
indistinguishability proofs (3.2), a central technique in obtaining
lower bounds and impossibility results.
A curious feature of this particular model is that communication channels are not modeled separately from processes, but instead are split across

CHAPTER 2. MODEL

processes (as the inbuf and outbuf variables). This leads to some oddities like
having to distinguish the accessible state of a process (which excludes the
outbufs) from the full state (which doesnt). A different approach (taken, for
example, by [Lyn96]) would be to have separate automata representing processes and communication channels. But since the resulting model produces
essentially the same executions, the exact details dont really matter.

2.1.2

Network structure

It may be the case that not all processes can communicate directly; if so,
we impose a network structure in the form of a directed graph, where i
can send a message to j if and only if there is an edge from i to j in the
graph. Typically we assume that each process knows the identity of all its
neighbors.
For some problems (e.g., in peer-to-peer systems or other overlay networks) it may be natural to assume that there is a fully-connected underlying network but that we have a dynamic network on top of it, where
processes can only send to other processes that they have obtained the addresses of in some way.

2.2

Asynchronous systems

In an asynchronous model, only minimal restrictions are placed on when

messages are delivered and when local computation occurs. A schedule is
said to be admissible if (a) there are infinitely many computation steps
for each process, and (b) every message is eventually delivered. (These are
fairness conditions.) The first condition (a) assumes that processes do not
explicitly terminate, which is the assumption used in [AW04]; an alternative,
which we will use when convenient, is to assume that every process either
has infinitely many computation steps or reaches an explicit halting state.

2.2.1

Example: client-server computing

Almost every distributed system in practical use is based on client-server

interactions. Here one process, the client, sends a request to a second
process, the server, which in turn sends back a response. We can model
this interaction using our asynchronous message-passing model by describing
what the transition functions for the client and the server look like: see
Algorithms 2.1 and 2.2.

CHAPTER 2. MODEL

1
2

initially do
send request to server
Algorithm 2.1: Client-server computation: client code

1
2

upon receiving request do

send response to client
Algorithm 2.2: Client-server computation: server code

The interpretation of Algorithm 2.1 is that the client sends request (by
adding it to its outbuf) in its very first computation event (after which it does
nothing). The interpretation of Algorithm 2.2 is that in any computation
event where the server observes request in its inbuf, it sends response.
We want to claim that the client eventually receives response in any
admissible execution. To prove this, observe that:
1. After finitely many steps, the client carries out a computation event.
This computation event puts request in its outbuf.
2. After finitely many more steps, a delivery event occurs that moves
request to the servers inbuf.
3. After finitely many more steps, the server executes a computation
event that causes it to send response.
4. After finitely many more steps, a delivery event occurs that moves
response to the clients inbuf.
5. After finitely many more steps, the client executes a computation
event that causes it to process response (and do nothing, given that
we havent include any code to handle this response).
Each step of the proof is justified by the constraints on admissible executions. If we could run for infinitely many steps without a particular process
doing a computation event or a particular message being delivered, wed
violate those constraints.
Most of the time we will not attempt to prove the correctness of a protocol at quite this level of tedious detail. But if you are only interested in
distributed algorithms that people actually use, you have now seen a proof
of correctness for 99.9% of them, and do not need to read any further.

CHAPTER 2. MODEL

2.3

Synchronous systems

A synchronous message-passing system is exactly like an asynchronous

system, except we insist that the schedule consists of alternating phases in
which (a) every process executes a computation step, and (b) all messages
are delivered. The combination of a computation phase and a delivery phase
is called a round. Synchronous systems are effectively those in which all
processes execute in lock-step, and there is no timing uncertainty. This
makes protocols much easier to design, but makes them less resistant to
real-world timing oddities. Sometimes this can be dealt with by applying a
synchronizer (Chapter 13), which transforms synchronous protocols into
asynchronous protocols at a small cost in complexity.

2.4

Complexity measures

There is no explicit notion of time in the asynchronous model, but we can

define a time measure by adopting the rule that every message is delivered
and processed at most 1 time unit after it is sent. Formally, we assign time
0 to the first event, and assign the largest time we can to each subsequent
event, subject to the rule that if a message m from i to j is created at time t,
then the time for the delivery of m from i to j and the time for the following
computation step of j are both no greater than j + 1. This is consistent with
an assumption that message propagation takes at most 1 time unit and that
local computation takes 0 time units. Another way to look at this is that it is
a definition of a time unit in terms of maximum message delay together with
an assumption that message delays dominate the cost of the computation.
This last assumption is pretty much always true for real-world networks with
any non-trivial physical separation between components, thanks to speed of
light limitations.
The time complexity of a protocol (that terminates) is the time of the
last event before all processes finish.
Note that looking at step complexity, the number of computation
events involving either a particular process (individual step complexity)
or all processes (total step complexity) is not useful in the asynchronous
model, because a process may be scheduled to carry out arbitrarily many
computation steps without any of its incoming or outgoing messages being
delivered, which probably means that it wont be making any progress.
These complexity measures will be more useful when we look at sharedmemory models (Part II).

CHAPTER 2. MODEL

For a protocol that terminates, the message complexity is the total

number of messages sent. We can also look at message length in bits, total bits sent, etc., if these are useful for distinguishing our new improved
protocol from last years model.
For synchronous systems, time complexity becomes just the number of
rounds until a protocol finishes. Message complexity is still only loosely
connected to time complexity; for example, there are synchronous leader
election (Chapter 6) algorithms that, by virtue of grossly abusing the synchrony assumption, have unbounded time complexity but very low message
complexity.

Chapter 3

Coordinated attack
(See also [Lyn96, 5.1].)
The Two Generals problem was the first widely-known distributed consensus problem, described in 1978 by Jim Gray [Gra78, 5.8.3.3.1], although
the same problem previously appeared under a different name [AEH75].
The setup of the problem is that we have two generals on opposite sides
of an enemy army, who must choose whether to attack the army or retreat.
If only one general attacks, his troops will be slaughtered. So the generals
need to reach agreement on their strategy.
To complicate matters, the generals can only communicate by sending
messages by (unreliable) carrier pigeon. We also suppose that at some point
each general must make an irrevocable decision to attack or retreat. The
interesting property of the problem is that if carrier pigeons can become
lost, there is no protocol that guarantees agreement in all cases unless the
outcome is predetermined (e.g. the generals always attack no matter what
happens). The essential idea of the proof is that any protocol that does
guarantee agreement can be shortened by deleting the last message; iterating
this process eventually leaves a protocol with no messages.
Adding more generals turns this into the coordinated attack problem,
a variant of consensus; but it doesnt make things any easier.

3.1

Formal description

To formalize this intuition, suppose that we have n 2 generals in a synchronous system with unreliable channelsthe set of messages received in
round i + 1 is always a subset of the set sent in round i, but it may be a
proper subset (even the empty set). Each general starts with an input 0
12

CHAPTER 3. COORDINATED ATTACK

(retreat) or 1 (attack) and must output 0 or 1 after some bounded number

of rounds. The requirements for the protocol are that, in all executions:
Agreement All processes output the same decision (0 or 1).
Validity If all processes have the same input x, and no messages are lost,
all processes produce output x. (If processes start with different inputs
or one or more messages are lost, processes can output 0 or 1 as long
as they all agree.)
Termination All processes terminate in a bounded number of rounds.1
Sadly, there is not protocol that satisfies all three conditions. We show
this in the next section.

3.2

Impossibility proof

To show coordinated attack is impossible,2 we use an indistinguishability

proof.
The basic idea of an indistinguishability proof is this:
Execution A is indistinguishable from execution B for some process
p if p sees the same things (messages or operation results) in both
executions.
If A is indistinguishable from B for p, then p does the same thing in
both executions.
So far, pretty dull. But now lets consider a chain of executions A =
A0 A1 . . . Ak = B, where Ai is indistinguishable from Ai+1 for some process
pi . Suppose also that we are trying to solve an agreement task, where every
process must output the same value. Then since pi outputs the same value
1
Bounded means that there is a fixed upper bound on the length of any execution.
We could also demand merely that all processes terminate in a finite number of rounds.
In general, finite is a weaker requirement than bounded, but if the number of possible
outcomes at each step is finite (as they are in this case), theyre equivalent. The reason
is that if we build a tree of all configurations, each configuration has only finitely many
successors, and the length of each path is finite, then Knigs lemma (see http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Konigs_lemma) says that there are only finitely many paths. So
we can take the length of the longest of these paths as our fixed bound. [BG97, Lemma
3.1]
2
Without making additional assumptions, always a caveat when discussing impossibility.

CHAPTER 3. COORDINATED ATTACK

in Ai and Ai+1 , every process outputs the same value in Ai and Ai+1 . By
induction on k, every process outputs the same value in A and B, even
though A and B may be very different executions.
This gives us a tool for proving impossibility results for agreement: show
that there is a path of indistinguishable executions between two executions
that are supposed to produce different output. Another way to picture
this: consider a graph whose nodes are all possible executions with an edge
between any two indistinguishable executions; then the set of output-0 executions cant be adjacent to the set of output-1 executions. If we prove the
graph is connected, we prove the output is the same for all executions.
For coordinated attack, we will show that no protocol satisfies all of
agreement, validity, and termination using an indistinguishability argument.
The key idea is to construct a path between the all-0-input and all-1-input
executions with no message loss via intermediate executions that are indistinguishable to at least one process.
Lets start with A = A0 being an execution in which all inputs are 1 and
all messages are delivered. Well build executions A1 , A2 , etc. by pruning
messages. Consider Ai and let m be some message that is delivered in the
last round in which any message is delivered. Construct Ai+1 by not delivering m. Observe that while Ai is distinguishable from Ai+1 by the recipient
of m, on the assumption that n 2 there is some other process that cant
tell whether m was delivered or not (the recipient cant let that other process know, because no subsequent message it sends are delivered in either
execution). Continue until we reach an execution Ak in which all inputs are
1 and no messages are sent. Next, let Ak+1 through Ak+n be obtained by
changing one input at a time from 1 to 0; each such execution is indistinguishable from its predecessor by any process whose input didnt change.
Finally, construct Ak+n through A2k+n by adding back messages in the reverse process used for A0 through Ak . This gets us to an execution Ak+n
in which all processes have input and no messages are lost. If agreement
holds, then the indistinguishability of adjacent executions to some process
means that the common output in A0 is the same as in A2k+n . But validity
requires that A0 outputs 1 and A2k+n outputs 0: so validity is violated.

3.3

Randomized coordinated attack

So we now know that we cant solve the coordinated attack problem. But
maybe we want to solve it anyway. The solution is to change the problem.
Randomized coordinated attack is like standard coordinated attack,

CHAPTER 3. COORDINATED ATTACK

but with less coordination. Specifically, well allow the processes to flip coins
to decide what to do, and assume that the communication pattern (which
messages get delivered in each round) is fixed and independent of the coinflips. This corresponds to assuming an oblivious adversary that cant
see what is going on at all or perhaps a content-oblivious adversary
that can only see where messages are being sent but not the contents of the
messages. Well also relax the agreement property to only hold with some
high probability:
Randomized agreement For any adversary A, the probability that some
process decides 0 and some other process decides 1 given A is at most
.
Validity and termination are as before.

3.3.1

An algorithm

Heres an algorithm that gives = 1/r. (See [Lyn96, 5.2.2] for details
or [VL92] for the original version.) A simplifying assumption is that network
is complete, although a strongly-connected network with r greater than or
equal to the diameter also works.
First part: tracking information levels
Each process tracks its information level, initially 0. The state
of a process consists of a vector of (input, information-level) pairs
for all processes in the system. Initially this is (my-input, 0) for
itself and (, 1) for everybody else.
Every process sends its entire state to every other process in every
round.
Upon receiving a message m, process i stores any inputs carried in
m and, for each process j, sets leveli [j] to max(leveli [j], levelm [j]).
It then sets its own information level to minj (leveli [j]) + 1.
Second part: deciding the output
Process 1 chooses a random key value uniformly in the range
[1, r].
This key is distributed along with leveli [1], so that every process
with leveli [1] 0 knows the key.

CHAPTER 3. COORDINATED ATTACK

A process decides 1 at round r if and only if it knows the key,

its information level is greater than or equal to the key, and all
inputs are 1.

3.3.2

Why it works

Termination Immediate from the algorithm.

Validity

If all inputs are 0, no process sees all 1 inputs (technically

requires an invariant that processes non-null views are consistent
with the inputs, but thats not hard to prove.)

If all inputs are 1 and no messages are lost, then the information
level of each process after k rounds is k (prove by induction) and
all processes learn the key and all inputs (immediate from first
round). So all processes decide 1.
Randomized Agreement
First prove a lemma: Define levelti [k] to
be the value of leveli [k] after t rounds.
Then for all i, j, k, t, (1)

t
t1

leveli [j] levelj [j]
and (2) leveli [k]t levelj [k]t 1. As
always, the proof is by induction on rounds. Part (1) is easy and
boring so well skip it. For part (2), we have:
After 0 rounds, level0i [k] = level0j [k] = 1 if neither i nor j
equals k; if one of them is k, we have level0k [k] = 0, which is
still close enough.
After t rounds, consider levelti [k] levelt1
i [k] and similarly
[k].
Its
not
hard
to
show
that each can
leveltj [k] levelt1
j
jump by at most 1. If both deltas are +1 or both are 0,
theres no change in the difference in views and we win from
the induction hypothesis. So the interesting case is when
leveli [k] stays the same and levelj [k] increases or vice versa.
There are two ways for levelj [k] to increase:
If j 6= k, then j received a message from some j 0 with
t1
leveljt1
[k]. From the induction hypothesis,
0 [k] > levelj
t1
t1
levelj 0 [k] leveli [k] + 1 = levelti [k]. So we are happy.
If j = k, then j has leveltj [j] = 1 + mink6=j leveltj [k]
1 + leveltj [i] 1 + levelti [i]. Again we are happy.
Note that in the preceding, the key value didnt figure in; so
everybodys level at round r is independent of the key.

CHAPTER 3. COORDINATED ATTACK

So now we have that levelri [i] is in {`, ` + 1}, where ` is some fixed
value uncorrelated with key. The only way to get some process
to decide 1 while others decide 0 is if ` + 1 key but ` < key.
(If ` = 0, a process at this level doesnt know key, but it can still
reason that 0 < key since key is in [1, r].) This can only occur if
key = ` + 1, which occurs with probability at most 1/r since key
was chosen uniformly.

3.3.3

Almost-matching lower bound

The bound on the probability of disagreement in the previous algorithm is

almost tight. Varghese and Lynch show that no synchronous algorithm can
1
get a probability of disagreement less than r+1
, using a stronger validity
condition that requires that the processes output 0 if any input is 0. This is
a natural assumption for database commit, where we dont want to commit
if any process wants to abort. We restate their result below:
Theorem 3.3.1. For any synchronous algorithm for randomized coordinated attack that runs in r rounds that satisfies the additional condition
that all non-faulty processes decide 0 if any input is 0, Pr[disagreement]
1/(r + 1).
Proof. Let be the bound on the probability of disagreement. Define levelti [k]
as in the previous algorithm (whatever the real algorithm is doing). Well
show Pr[i decides 1] (levelri [i] + 1), by induction on levelri [i].
If levelri [i] = 0, the real execution is indistinguishable (to i) from an
execution in which some other process j starts with 0 and receives no
messages at all. In that execution, j must decide 0 or risk violating the
strong validity assumption. So i decides 1 with probability at most
(from the disagreement bound).
If levelri [i] = k > 0, the real execution is indistinguishable (to i) from
an execution in which some other process j only reaches level k 1
and thereafter receives no messages. From the induction hypothesis,
Pr[j decides 1] k in that pruned execution, and so Pr[i decides 1]
(k + 1) in the pruned execution. But by indistinguishability, we also
have Pr[i decides 1] (k + 1) in the original execution.
Now observe that in the all-1 input execution with no messages lost,
levelri [i] = r and Pr[i decides 1] = 1 (by validity). So 1 (r + 1), which
implies 1/(r + 1).

Chapter 4

Broadcast and convergecast

Here well describe protocols for propagating information throughout a network from some central initiator and gathering information back to that
same initiator. We do this both because the algorithms are actually useful
and because they illustrate some of the issues that come up with keeping
time complexity down in an asynchronous message-passing system.

4.1

Flooding

Flooding is about the simplest of all distributed algorithms. Its dumb and
expensive, but easy to implement, and gives you both a broadcast mechanism and a way to build rooted spanning trees.
Well give a fairly simple presentation of flooding roughly following Chapter 2 of [AW04].

4.1.1

Basic algorithm

The basic flooding algorithm is shown in Algorithm 4.1. The idea is that
when a process receives a message M , it forwards it to all of its neighbors
unless it has seen it before, which it tracks using a single bit seen-message.
Theorem 4.1.1. Every process receives M after at most D time and at
most |E| messages, where D is the diameter of the network and E is the set
of (directed) edges in the network.
Proof. Message complexity: Each process only sends M to its neighbors
once, so each edge carries at most one copy of M .
Time complexity: By induction on d(root, v), well show that each v
receives M for the first time no later than time d(root, v) D. The base
18

CHAPTER 4. BROADCAST AND CONVERGECAST

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

initially do
if pid = root then
seen-message true
send M to all neighbors
else
seen-message false
upon receiving M do
if seen-message = false then
seen-message true
send M to all neighbors
Algorithm 4.1: Basic flooding algorithm

case is when v = root, d(root, v) = 0; here root receives message at time

0. For the induction step, Let d(root, v) = k > 0. Then v has a neighbor
u such that d(root, u) = k 1. By the induction hypothesis, u receives M
for the first time no later than time k 1. From the code, u then sends
M to all of its neighbors, including v; M arrives at v no later than time
(k 1) + 1 = k.
Note that the time complexity proof also demonstrates correctness: every
process receives M at least once.
As written, this is a one-shot algorithm: you cant broadcast a second message even if you wanted to. The obvious fix is for each process
to remember which messages it has seen and only forward the new ones
(which costs memory) and/or to add a time-to-live (TTL) field on each
message that drops by one each time it is forwarded (which may cost extra messages and possibly prevents complete broadcast if the initial TTL
is too small). The latter method is what was used for searching in http:
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella, an early peer-to-peer system. An
interesting property of Gnutella was that since the application of flooding
was to search for huge (multiple MiB) files using tiny ( 100 byte) query messages, the actual bit complexity of the flooding algorithm was not especially
large relative to the bit complexity of sending any file that was found.
We can optimize the algorithm slightly by not sending M back to the
node it came from; this will slightly reduce the message complexity in many
cases but makes the proof a sentence or two longer. (Its all a question of
what you want to optimize.)

CHAPTER 4. BROADCAST AND CONVERGECAST

4.1.2

Adding parent pointers

To build a spanning tree, modify Algorithm 4.1 by having each process

remember who it first received M from. The revised code is given as Algorithm 4.2
initially do
if pid = root then
parent root
send M to all neighbors
else
parent

1
2
3
4
5
6

upon receiving M from p do

if parent = then
parent p

7
8
9
10

send M to all neighbors

Algorithm 4.2: Flooding with parent pointers

We can easily prove that Algorithm 4.2 has the same termination properties as Algorithm 4.1 by observing that if we map parent to seen-message
by the rule false, anything else true, then we have the same algorithm. We would like one additional property, which is that when the
algorithm quiesces (has no outstanding messages), the set of parent pointers form a rooted spanning tree. For this we use induction on time:
Lemma 4.1.2. At any time during the execution of Algorithm 4.2, the
following invariant holds:
1. If u.parent 6= , then u.parent.parent 6= and following parent pointers gives a path from u to root.
2. If there is a message M in transit from u to v, then u.parent 6= .
Proof. We have to show that any event preserves the invariant.
Delivery event M used to be in u.outbuf, now its in v.inbuf, but its still
in transit and u.parent is still not .1
1

This sort of extraneous special case is why I personally dont like the split between
outbuf and inbuf used in [AW04], even though it makes defining the synchronous model
easier.

CHAPTER 4. BROADCAST AND CONVERGECAST

Computation event Let v receive M from u. There are two cases: if

v.parent is already non-null, the only state change is that M is no
longer in transit, so we dont care about u.parent any more. If v.parent
is null, then
1. v.parent is set to u. This triggers the first case of the invariant.
From the induction hypothesis we have that u.parent 6= and
that there exists a path from u to the root. Then v.parent.parent =
u.parent 6= and the path from v u root gives the path
from v.
2. Message M is sent to all of vs neighbors. Because M is now in
transit from v, we need v.parent 6= ; but we just set it to u, so
we are happy.

At the end of the algorithm, the invariant shows that every process has
a path to the root, i.e., that the graph represented by the parent pointers is
connected. Since this graph has exactly |V | 1 edges (if we dont count the
self-loop at the root), its a tree.
Though we get a spanning tree at the end, we may not get a very good
spanning tree. For example, suppose our friend the adversary picks some
Hamiltonian path through the network and delivers messages along this
path very quickly while delaying all other messages for the full allowed 1
time unit. Then the resulting spanning tree will have depth |V | 1, which
might be much worse than D. If we want the shallowest possible spanning
tree, we need to do something more sophisticated: see the discussion of
distributed breadth-first search in Chapter 5. However, we may be
happy with the tree we get from simple flooding: if the message delay on
each link is consistent, then its not hard to prove that we in fact get a
shortest-path tree. As a special case, flooding always produces a BFS tree
in the synchronous model.
Note also that while the algorithm works in a directed graph, the parent
pointers may not be very useful if links arent two-way.

4.1.3

Termination

See [AW04, Chapter 2] for further modifications that allow the processes to
detect termination. In a sense, each process can terminate as soon as it is
done sending M to all of its neighbors, but this still requires some mechanism for clearing out the inbuf; by adding acknowledgments as described in

CHAPTER 4. BROADCAST AND CONVERGECAST

[AW04], we can terminate with the assurance that no further messages will
be received.

4.2

Convergecast

A convergecast is the inverse of broadcast: instead of a message propagating down from a single root to all nodes, data is collected from outlying
nodes to the root. Typically some function is applied to the incoming data
at each node to summarize it, with the goal being that eventually the root
obtains this function of all the data in the entire system. (Examples would
be counting all the nodes or taking an average of input values at all the
nodes.)
A basic convergecast algorithm is given in Algorithm 4.3; it propagates
information up through a previously-computed spanning tree.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

initially do
if I am a leaf then
send input to parent
upon receiving M from c do
append (c, M ) to buffer
if buffer contains messages from all my children then
v f (buffer, input)
if pid = root then
return v
else
send v to parent
Algorithm 4.3: Convergecast
The details of what is being computed depend on the choice of f :
If input = 1 for all nodes and f is sum, then we count the number of
nodes in the system.
If input is arbitrary and f is sum, then we get a total of all the input
values.
Combining the above lets us compute averages, by dividing the total
of all the inputs by the node count.

CHAPTER 4. BROADCAST AND CONVERGECAST

If f just concatenates its arguments, the root ends up with a vector

of all the input values.
Running time is bounded by the depth of the tree: we can prove by
induction that any node at height h (height is length of the longest path
from this node to some leaf) sends a message by time h at the latest. Message complexity is exactly n 1, where n is the number of nodes; this is
easily shown by observing that each node except the root sends exactly one
message.
Proving that convergecast returns the correct value is similarly done by
induction on depth: if each child of some node computes a correct value, then
that node will compute f applied to these values and its own input. What
the result of this computation is will, of course, depend on f ; it generally
makes the most sense when f represents some associative operation (as in
the examples above).

4.3

Flooding and convergecast together

A natural way to build the spanning tree used by convergecast is to run

flooding first. This also provides a mechanism for letting the leaves know
that they are leaves and initiating the protocol. The combined algorithm is
shown as Algorithm 4.4.
However, this may lead to very bad time complexity for the convergecast
stage. Consider a wheel-shaped network consisting of one central node p0
connected to nodes p1 , p2 , . . . , pn1 , where each pi is also connected to pi+1 .
By carefully arranging for the pi pi+1 links to run much faster than the
p0 pi links, the adversary can make flooding build a tree that consists of
a single path p0 p1 p2 . . . pn1 , even though the diameter of the network is
only 2. While it only takes 2 time units to build this tree (because every
node is only one hop away from the initiator), when we run convergecast
we suddenly find that the previously-speedy links are now running only at
the guaranteed 1 time unit per hop rate, meaning that convergecast takes
n 1 time.
This may be less of an issue in real networks, where the latency of links
may be more uniform over time, meaning that a deep tree of fast links is
still likely to be fast when we reach the convergecast step. But in the worst
case we will need to be more clever about building the tree. We show how
to do this in Chapter 5.

CHAPTER 4. BROADCAST AND CONVERGECAST

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

initially do
children
nonChildren
if pid = root then
parent root
send init to all neighbors
else
parent
upon receiving init from p do
if parent = then
parent p
send init to all neighbors
else
send nack to p
upon receiving nack from p do
nonChildren nonChildren {p}
as soon as children nonChildren includes all my neighbors do
v f (buffer, input)
if pid = root then
return v
else
send ack(v) to parent
upon receiving ack(v) from k do
add (k, v) to buffer
add k to children
Algorithm 4.4: Flooding and convergecast combined

Chapter 5

Distributed breadth-first
search
Here we describe some algorithms for building a breadth-first search
(BFS) tree in a network. All assume that there is a designated initiator node that starts the algorithm. At the end of the execution, each node
except the initiator has a parent pointer and every node has a list of children. These are consistent and define a BFS tree: nodes at distance k from
the initiator appear at level k of the tree.
In a synchronous network, flooding (4.1) solves BFS; see [AW04, Lemma
2.8, page 21] or [Lyn96, 4.2]. So the interesting case is when the network
is asynchronous.
In an asynchronous network, the complication is that we can no longer
rely on synchronous communication to reach all nodes at distance d at the
same time. So instead we need to keep track of distances explicitly, or
possibly enforce some approximation to synchrony in the algorithm. (A
general version of this last approach is to apply a synchronizer to one of the
synchronous algorithms using a synchronizer; see Chapter 13.)
To keep things simple, well drop the requirement that a parent learn
the IDs of its children, since this can be tacked on as a separate notification
protocol, in which each child just sends one message to its parent once it
figures out who its parent is.

5.1

Using explicit distances

This is a translation of the AsynchBFS automaton from [Lyn96, 15.4]. Its

a very simple algorithm, closely related to Dijkstras algorithm for shortest
25

CHAPTER 5. DISTRIBUTED BREADTH-FIRST SEARCH

paths, but there is otherwise no particular reason to use it; it is dominated

by the O(D) time and O(DE) message complexity synchronizer-based algorithm described in 5.3. (Here D is the diameter of the network, the
maximum distance between any two nodes.)
The idea is to run flooding with distances attached. Each node sets its
distance to 1 plus the smallest distance sent by its neighbors and its parent
to the neighbor supplying that smallest distance. A node notifies all its
neighbors of its new distance whenever its distance changes.
Pseudocode is given in Algorithm 5.1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

initially do
if pid = initiator then
distance 0
send distance to all neighbors
else
distance
upon receiving d from p do
if d + 1 < distance then
distance d + 1
parent p
Algorithm 5.1: AsynchBFS algorithm (from [Lyn96])

(See [Lyn96] for a precondition-effect description, which also includes

code for buffering outgoing messages.)
The claim is that after at most O(V E) messages and O(D) time, all
distance values are equal to the length of the shortest path from the initiator
to the appropriate node. The proof is by showing the following:
Lemma 5.1.1. The variable distancep is always the length of some path
from initiator to p, and any message sent by p is also the length of some
path from initiator to p.
Proof. The second part follows from the first; any message sent equals ps
current value of distance. For the first part, suppose p updates its distance;
then it sets it to one more than the length of some path from initiator to p0 ,
which is the length of that same path extended by adding the pp0 edge.
We also need a liveness argument that says that distancep = d(initiator, p)
no later than time d(initiator, p). Note that we cant detect when distance
stabilizes to the correct value without a lot of additional work.

CHAPTER 5. DISTRIBUTED BREADTH-FIRST SEARCH

In [Lyn96], theres an extra |V | term in the time complexity that comes

from message pile-ups, since the model used there only allows one incoming
message to be processed per time units (the model in [AW04] doesnt have
this restriction). The trick to arranging this to happen often is to build a
graph where node 1 is connected to nodes 2 and 3, node 2 to 3 and 4, node
3 to 4 and 5, etc. This allows us to quickly generate many paths of distinct
lengths from node 1 to node k, which produces k outgoing messages from
node k. It may be that a more clever analysis can avoid this blowup, by
showing that it only happens in a few places.

5.2

Using layering

This approach is used in the LayeredBFS algorithm in [Lyn96], which is due

to Gallager [Gal82].
Here we run a sequence of up to |V | instances of the simple algorithm
with a distance bound on each: instead of sending out just 0, the initiator
sends out (0, bound), where bound is initially 1 and increases at each phase.
A process only sends out its improved distance if it is less than bound.
Each phase of the algorithm constructs a partial BFS tree that contains
only those nodes within distance bound of the root. This tree is used to
report back to the root when the phase is complete. For the following phase,
notification of the increase in bound increase is distributed only through the
partial BFS tree constructed so far. With some effort, it is possible to
prove that in a bidirectional network that this approach guarantees that
each edge is only probed once with a new distance (since distance-1 nodes
are recruited before distance-2 nodes and so on), and the bound-update and
acknowledgment messages contribute at most |V | messages per phase. So
we get O(E + V D) total messages. But the time complexity is bad: O(D2 )
in the worst case.

5.3

Using local synchronization

The reason the layering algorithm takes so long is that at each phase we
have to phone all the way back up the tree to the initiator to get permission
to go on to the next phase. We need to do this to make sure that a node
is only recruited into the tree once: otherwise we can get pile-ups on the
channels as in the simple algorithm. But we dont necessarily need to do
this globally. Instead, well require each node at distance d to delay sending
out a recruiting message until it has confirmed that none of its neighbors

CHAPTER 5. DISTRIBUTED BREADTH-FIRST SEARCH

will be sending it a smaller distance. We do this by having two classes of

messages:1
exactly(d): I know that my distance is d.
more-than(d): I know that my distance is > d.
The rules for sending these messages for a non-initiator are:
1. I can send exactly(d) as soon as I have received exactly(d 1) from at
least one neighbor and more-than(d 2) from all neighbors.
2. I can send more-than(d) if d = 0 or as soon as I have received more-than(d
1) from all neighbors.
The initiator sends exactly(0) to all neighbors at the start of the protocol
(these are the only messages the initiator sends).
My distance will be the unique distance that I am allowed to send in an
exactly(d) messages. Note that this algorithm terminates in the sense that
every node learns its distance at some finite time.
If you read the discussion of synchronizers in Chapter 13, this algorithm essentially corresponds to building the alpha synchronizer into the
synchronous BFS algorithm, just as the layered model builds in the beta
synchronizer. See [AW04, 11.3.2] for a discussion of BFS using synchronizers. The original approach of applying synchronizers to get BFS is due
to Awerbuch [Awe85].
We now show correctness. Under the assumption that local computation
takes zero time and message delivery takes at most 1 time unit, well show
that if d(initiator, p) = d, (a) p sends more-than(d0 ) for any d0 < d by time
d0 , (b) p sends exactly(d) by time d, (c) p never sends more-than(d0 ) for any
d0 d, and (d) p never sends exactly(d0 ) for any d0 6= d. For parts (c) and
(d) we use induction on d0 ; for (a) and (b), induction on time. This is not
terribly surprising: (c) and (d) are safety properties, so we dont need to
talk about time. But (a) and (b) are liveness properties so time comes in.
Lets start with (c) and (d). The base case is that the initiator never
sends any more-than messages at all, and so never sends more-than(0), and
any non-initiator never sends exactly(0). For larger d0 , observe that if a
non-initiator p sends more-than(d0 ) for d0 d, it must first have received
1
In an earlier version of these notes, these messages where called distance(d) and
not-distance(d); the more self-explanatory exactly and more-than terminology is taken from
[BDLP08].

CHAPTER 5. DISTRIBUTED BREADTH-FIRST SEARCH

more-than(d0 1) from all neighbors, including some neighbor p0 at distance

d1. But the induction hypothesis tells us that p0 cant send more-than(d0
1) for d0 1 d 1. Similarly, to send exactly(d0 ) for d0 < d, p must first
have received exactly(d0 1) from some neighbor p0 , but again p0 must be at
distance at least d1 from the initiator and so cant send this message either.
In the other direction, to send exactly(d0 ) for d0 > d, p must first receive
more-than(d0 2) from this closer neighbor p0 , but then d0 2 > d 2 d 1
so more-than(d0 2) is not sent by p0 .
Now for (a) and (b). The base case is that the initiator sends exactly(0)
to all nodes at time 0, giving (a), and there is no more-than(d0 ) with d0 < 0
for it to send, giving (b) vacuously; and any non-initiator sends more-than(0)
immediately. At time t + 1, we have that (a) more-than(t) was sent by any
node at distance t + 1 or greater by time t and (b) exactly(t) was sent by
any node at distance t by time t; so for any node at distance t + 2 we
send more-than(t + 1) no later than time t + 1 (because we already received
more-than(t) from all our neighbors) and for any node at distance t + 1 we
send exactly(t + 1) no later than time t + 1 (because we received all the
preconditions for doing so by this time).
Message complexity: A node at distance d sends more-than(d0 ) for all
0 < d0 < d and exactly(d) and no other messages. So we have message
complexity bounded by |E| D in the worst case. Note that this is gives a
bound of O(DE), which is slightly worse than the O(E + DV ) bound for
the layered algorithm.
Time complexity: Its immediate from (a) and (b) that all messages that
are sent are sent by time D, and indeed that any node p learns its distance
at time d(initiator, p). So we have optimal time complexity, at the cost of
higher message complexity. I dont know if this trade-off is necessary, or if
a more sophisticated algorithm could optimize both.
Our time proof assumes that messages dont pile up on edges, or that
such pile-ups dont affect delivery time (this is the default assumption used
in [AW04]). A more sophisticated proof could remove this assumption.
One downside of this algorithm is that it has to be started simultaneously at all nodes. Alternatively, we could trigger time 0 at each node
by a broadcast from the initiator, using the usual asynchronous broadcast
algorithm; this would give us a BFS tree in O(|E| D) messages (since the
O(|E|) messages of the broadcast disappear into the constant) and 2D time.
The analysis of time goes through as before, except that the starting time 0
becomes the time at which the last node in the system is woken up by the
broadcast. Further optimizations are possible; see, for example, the paper
of Boulinier et al. [BDLP08], which shows how to run the same algorithm

CHAPTER 5. DISTRIBUTED BREADTH-FIRST SEARCH

with constant-size messages.

Chapter 6

Leader election
See [AW04, Chapter 3] or [Lyn96, Chapter 3] for details.
The basic idea of leader election is that we want a single process to
declare itself leader and the others to declare themselves non-leaders. The
non-leaders may or may not learn the identity of the leader as part of the protocol; if not, we can always add an extra phase where the leader broadcasts
its identity to the others. Traditionally, leader election has been used as a
way to study the effects of symmetry, and many leader election algorithms
are designed for networks in the form of a ring.
A classic result of Angluin [Ang80] shows that leader election in a ring
is impossible if the processes do not start with distinct identities. The proof
is that if everybody is in the same state at every step, they all put on the
crown at the same time. We discuss this result in more detail in 6.1.
With ordered identities, a simple algorithm due to Le Lann [LL77] and
Chang and Roberts [CR79] solves the problem in O(n) time with O(n2 )
messages: I send out my own id clockwise and forward any id bigger than
mine. If I get my id back, I win. This works with a unidirectional ring,
doesnt require synchrony, and never produces multiple leaders. See 6.2.1
for more details.
On a bidirectional ring we can get O(n log n) messages and O(n) time
with power-of-2 probing, using an algorithm of Hirschberg and Sinclair [HS80].
This is described in 6.2.2.
An evil trick: if we have synchronized starting, known n, and known id
space, we can have process with id i wait until round i n to start sending
its id around, and have everybody else drop out when they receive it; this
way only one process (the one with smallest id) ever starts a message and
only n messages are sent [FL87]. But the running time can be pretty bad.

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

For general networks, we can apply the same basic strategy as in LeLannChang-Roberts by having each process initiate a broadcast/convergecast
algorithm that succeeds only if the initiator has the smallest id. This is
described in more detail in 6.3.
Some additional algorithms for the asynchronous ring are given in 6.2.3
and 6.2.4. Lower bounds are shown in 6.4.

6.1

Symmetry

A system exhibits symmetry if we can permute the nodes without changing

the behavior of the system. More formally, we can define a symmetry as an
equivalence relation on processes, where we have the additional properties
that all processes in the same equivalence class run the same code; and
whenever p is equivalent to p0 , each neighbor q of p is equivalent to the
corresponding neighbor q 0 of p0 .
An example of a network with a lot of symmetries would be an anonymous ring, which is a network in the form of a cycle (the ring part) in
which every process runs the same code (the anonymous part). In this case
all nodes are equivalent. If we have a line, then we might or might not have
any non-trivial symmetries: if each node has a sense of direction that
tells it which neighbor is to the left and which is to the right, then we can
identify each node uniquely by its distance from the left edge. But if the
nodes dont have a sense of direction,1 we can flip the line over and pair up
nodes that map to each other.
Symmetries are convenient for proving impossibility results, as observed
by Angluin [Ang80]. The underlying theme is that without some mechanism for symmetry breaking, a message-passing system escape from a
symmetric initial configuration. The following lemma holds for deterministic systems, basically those in which processes cant flip coins:
Lemma 6.1.1. A symmetric deterministic message-passing system that
starts in an initial configuration in which equivalent processes have the same
state has a synchronous execution in which equivalent processes continue to
have the same state.
Proof. Easy induction on rounds: if in some round p and p0 are equivalent
and have the same state, and all their neighbors are equivalent and have the
same state, then p and p0 receive the same messages from their neighbors
1

Typically, this means that the nodes can tell their neighbors apart, but that their
code behaves the same way if the left and right neighbors are flipped.

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

and can proceed to the same state (including outgoing messages) in the next
round.
An immediate corollary is that you cant do leader election in an anonymous system with a symmetry that puts each node in a non-trivial equivalence class, because as soon as I stick my hand up to declare Im the leader,
so do all my equivalence-class buddies.
With randomization, Lemma 6.1.1 doesnt directly apply, since we can
break symmetry by having my coin-flips come up differently from yours. It
does show that we cant guarantee convergence to a single leader in any fixed
amount of time (because otherwise we could just fix all the coin flips to get
a deterministic algorithm). Depending on what the processes know about
the size of the system, it may still be possible to show that a randomized
algorithm necessarily fails in some cases.
A more direct way to break symmetry is to assume that all processes
have identities; now processes can break symmetry by just declaring that
the one with the smaller or larger identity wins. This approach is taken in
the algorithms in the following sections.

6.2

Leader election in rings

Here well describe some basic leader election algorithms for rings. Historically, rings were the first networks in which leader election was studied,
because they are the simplest networks whose symmetry makes the problem
difficult, and because of the connection to token-ring networks, a method
for congestion control in local-area networks that is no longer used much.

6.2.1

The Le-Lann-Chang-Roberts algorithm

.
This is about the simplest leader election algorithm there is. It works
in a unidirectional ring, where messages can only travel clockwise.2 The
algorithms works does not require synchrony, but well assume synchrony to
make it easier to follow.
Formally, well let the state space for each process i consist of two variables: leader, initially 0, which is set to 1 if i decides its a leader; and maxId,
the largest id seen so far. We assume that i denotes is position rather than
2

Well see later in 6.2.3 that the distinction between unidirectional rings and bidirectional rings is not a big deal, but for now lets imagine that having a unidirectional ring
is a serious hardship.

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

its id, which well write as idi . We will also treat all positions as values mod
n, to simplify the arithmetic.
Code for the LCR algorithm is given in Algorithm 6.1.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

initially do
leader 0
maxId idi
send idi to clockwise neighbor
upon receiving j do
if j = idi then
leader 1
if j > maxId then
maxId j
send j to clockwise neighbor
Algorithm 6.1: LCR leader election

6.2.1.1

Proof of correctness for synchronous executions

By induction on the round number k. The induction hypothesis is that

in round k, each process is leader bit is 0, its maxId value is equal to the
largest id in the range (i k) . . . i, and that it sends idik if and only if idik
is the largest id in the range (i k) . . . i. The base case is that when k = 0,
maxId = idi is the largest id in i . . . i, and i sends idi . For the induction step,
observe that in round k 1, i 1 sends id(i1)(k1) = idik if and only if it
is the largest in the range (i k) . . . (i 1), and that i adopts it as the new
value of maxId and sends it just in case it is larger than the previous largest
value in (i k + 1) . . . (i 1), i.e., if it is the largest value in (i k) . . . i.
Finally, in round n 1, i 1 sends idiN = idi if and only if i is the
largest id in (i n + 1) . . . i, the whole state space. So i receives idi and sets
leaderi = 1 if and only if it has the maximum id.
6.2.1.2

Performance

Its immediate from the correctness proof that the protocols terminates after
exactly n rounds.
To count message traffic, observe that each process sends at most 1
message per round, for a total of O(n2 ) messages. This is a tight bound

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

since if the ids are in decreasing order n, n 1, n 2, . . . 1, then no messages

get eaten until they hit n.

6.2.2

The Hirschberg-Sinclair algorithm

Basically the same as for LCR but both the protocol and the invariant
get much messier. To specify the protocol, it may help to think of messages as mobile agents and the state of each process as being of the form
(local-state, {agents Im carrying}). Then the sending rule for a process becomes ship any agents in whatever direction they want to go and the transition rule is accept any incoming agents and update their state in terms of
their own internal transition rules. An agent state for LCR will be something like (original-sender, direction, hop-count, max-seen) where direction
is R or L depending on which way the agent is going, hop-count is initially
2k when the agent is sent and drops by 1 each time the agent moves, and
max-seen is the biggest id of any node the agent has visited. An agent turns
around (switches direction) when hop-count reaches 0.
To prove this works, we can mostly ignore the early phases (though we
have to show that the max-id node doesnt drop out early, which is not
too hard). The last phase involves any surviving node probing all the way
around the ring, so it will declare itself leader only when it receives its own
agent from the left. That exactly one node does so is immediate from the
same argument for LCR.
Complexity analysis is mildly painful but basically comes down to the
fact that any node that sends a message 2k hops had to be a winner at
phase 2k1 , which means that it is the largest of some group of 2k1 ids.
Thus the 2k -hop senders are spaced at least 2k1 away from each other and
there are at most n/2k1 of them. Summing up over all dlg ne phases, we
Pdlg ne
Pdlg ne
get k=0 2k n/2k1 = O(n log n) messages and k=0 2k = O(n) time.

6.2.3

Petersons algorithm for the unidirectional ring

This algorithm is due to Peterson [Pet82] and assumes an asynchronous,

unidirectional ring. It gets O(n log n) message complexity in all executions.
The basic idea (2-way communication version): Start with n candidate
leaders. In each of at most lg n asynchronous phases, each candidate probes
its nearest neighbors to the left and right; if its ID is larger than the IDs of
both neighbors, it survives to the next phase. Non-candidates act as relays
passing messages between candidates. As in Hirschberg and Sinclair (6.2.2),
the probing operations in each phase take O(n) messages, and at least half

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

of the candidates drop out in each phase. The last surviving candidate wins
when it finds that its its own neighbor.
To make this work in a 1-way ring, we have to simulate 2-way communication by moving the candidates clockwise around the ring to catch up with
their unsendable counterclockwise messages. Petersons algorithm does this
with a two-hop approach that is inspired by the 2-way case above; in each
phase k, a candidate effectively moves two positions to the right, allowing it
to look at the ids of three phase-k candidates before deciding to continue in
phase k + 1 or not. Here is a very high-level description; it assumes that we
can buffer and ignore incoming messages from the later phases until we get
to the right phase, and that we can execute sends immediately upon receiving messages. Doing this formally in terms of I/O automata or the model of
2.1 means that we have to build explicit internal buffers into our processes,
which we can easily do but wont do here (see [Lyn96, pp. 483484] for the
right way to do this.)
We can use a similar trick to transform any bidirectional-ring algorithm
into a unidirectional-ring algorithm: alternative between phases where we
send a message right, then send a virtual process right to pick up any leftgoing messages deposited for us. The problem with this trick is that it
requires two messages per process per phase, which gives us a total message
complexity of O(n2 ) if we start with an O(n)-time algorithm. Petersons
algorithm avoids this by only propagating the surviving candidates.
Pseudocode for Petersons algorithm is given in Algorithm 6.2.
Note: the phase arguments in the probe messages are useless if one has
FIFO channels, which is why [Lyn96] doesnt use them. Note also that the
algorithm does not elect the process with the highest ID, but the process
that is carrying the sole surviving candidate in the last phase.
Proof of correctness is essentially the same as for the 2-way algorithm.
For any pair of adjacent candidates, at most one of their current IDs survives
to the next phase. So we get a sole survivor after lg n phases. Each process
sends or relays at most 2 messages per phases, so we get at most 2n lg n
total messages.

6.2.4

A simple randomized O(n log n)-message algorithm

An alternative to running a more sophisticated algorithm is to reduce the

average cost of LCR using randomization. The presentation here follows the
average-case analysis done by Chang and Roberts [CR79].
Run LCR where each id is constructed by prepending a long random
bit-string to the real id. This gives uniqueness (since the real ids act as

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21

procedure candidate()
phase 0
current pid
while true do
send probe(phase, current)
wait for probe(phase, x)
id2 x
send probe(phase, current)
wait for probe(phase, x)
id3 x
if id2 = current then
I am the leader!
return
else if id2 > current and id2 > id3 do
current id2
phase phase + 1
else
switch to relay()
procedure relay()
upon receiving probe(p, i) do
send probe(p, i)
Algorithm 6.2: Petersons leader-election algorithm

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

tie-breakers) and something very close to a random permutation on the

constructed ids. When we have unique random ids, a simple argument
shows that the i-th largest id only propagates an expected n/i hops, giving
a total of O(nHn ) = O(n log n) hops.3 Unique random ids occur with high
probability provided the range of the random sequence is n2 .
The downside of this algorithm compared to Petersons is that knowledge
of n is required to pick random ids from a large enough range. It also has
higher bit complexity since Petersons algorithm is sending only IDs (in the
official version) without any random padding.

6.3

Leader election in general networks

For general networks, a simple approach is to have each node initiate a

breadth-first-search and convergecast, with nodes refusing to participate in
the protocol for any initiator with a lower id. It follows that only the node
with the maximum id can finish its protocol; this node becomes the leader.
If messages from parallel broadcasts are combined, its possible to keep the
message complexity of this algorithm down to O(DE).
More sophisticated algorithms reduce the message complexity by coalescing local neighborhoods similar to what happens in the Hirschberg-Sinclair
and Peterson algorithms. A noteworthy example is an O(n log n) messagecomplexity algorithm of Afek and Gafni [AG91], who also show an (n log n)
lower bound on message complexity for any synchronous algorithm in a complete network.

6.4

Lower bounds

Here we present two classic (log n) lower bounds on message complexity

for leader election in the ring. The first, due to Burns [Bur80], assumes
that the system is asynchronous and that the algorithm is uniform: it
does not depend on the size of the ring. The second, due to Frederickson
and Lynch [FL87], allows a synchronous system and relaxes the uniformity
assumption, but requires that the algorithm cant do anything to ids but
copy and compare them.
3

Alternatively, we could consider the average-case complexity of the algorithm when

we assume all n! orderings of the ids are equally likely; this also gives O(n log n) expected
message complexity [CR79].

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

6.4.1

Lower bound on asynchronous message complexity

Here we describe a lower bound for uniform asynchronous leader election in

the ring. The description here is based on [AW04, 3.3.3]; a slightly different
presentation can also be found in [Lyn96, 15.1.4]. The original result is due
to Burns [Bur80]. We assume the system is deterministic.
The basic idea is to construct a bad execution in which n processes
send lots of messages recursively, by first constructing two bad (n/2)-process
executions and pasting them together in a way that generates many extra
messages. If the pasting step produces (n) additional messages, we get a
recurrence T (n) 2T (n/2) + (n) for the total message traffic, which has
solution T (n) = (n log n).
Well assume that all processes are trying to learn the identity of the
process with the smallest id. This is a slightly stronger problem that mere
leader election, but it can be solved with at most an additional 2n messages
once we actually elect a leader. So if we get a lower bound of f (n) messages
on this problem, we immediately get a lower bound of f (n) 2n on leader
election.
To construct the bad execution, we consider open executions on rings
of size n where no message is delivered across some edge (these will be partial
executions, because otherwise the guarantee of eventual delivery kicks in).
Because no message is delivered across this edge, the processes cant tell if
there is really a single edge there or some enormous unexplored fragment of
a much larger ring. Our induction hypothesis will show that a line of n/2
processes can be made to send at least T (n/2) messages in an open execution
(before seeing any messages across the open edge); well then show that a
linear number of additional messages can be generated by pasting two such
executions together end-to-end, while still getting an open execution with n
processes.
In the base case, we let n = 2. Somebody has to send a message eventually, giving T (2) 1.
For larger n, suppose that we have two open executions on n/2 processes
that each send at least T (n/2) messages. Break the open edges in both
executions and paste the resulting lines together to get a ring of size n;
similarly paste the schedules 1 and 2 of the two executions together to
get a combined schedule 1 2 with at least 2T (n/2) messages. Note that in
the combined schedule no messages are passed between the two sides, so the
processes continue to behave as they did in their separate executions.
Let e and e0 be the edges we used to past together the two rings. Extend
1 2 by the longest possible suffix 3 in which no messages are delivered

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

across e and e0 . Since 3 is as long as possible, after 1 2 3 , there are no

messages waiting to be delivered across any edge except e and e0 and all
processes are quiescentthey will send no additional messages until they
receive one.
Now consider the processes in the half of the ring with the larger minimum id. Because each process must learn the minimum id in the other
half of the ring, each of these processes must receive a message in some
complete execution, giving an additional n/2 2 messages (since two of the
processes might receive undelivered messages on e or e0 that weve already
counted). But to prove our induction hypothesis, we need to keep one of
e or e0 open. Consider some execution 1 2 3 4 in which all messages delayed on both e and e0 are delivered, and partition the n/2 process on the
losing side into two groups based on whether the first message they get is
triggered by opening e or e0 . One of these two groups must contain at least
half the n/2 2 processes who receive new messages, meaning that there is
an execution 1 2 3 40 in which we open up only one edge and still get an
additional (n/2 2)/2 = (n) messages. This concludes the proof.

6.4.2

Lower bound for comparison-based algorithms

Here we give an (n log n) lower bound on messages for synchronous-start

comparison-based algorithms in bidirectional synchronous rings. For full
details see [Lyn96, 3.6], [AW04, 3.4.2], or the original JACM paper by
Frederickson and Lynch [FL87].
Basic ideas:
Two fragments i . . . i+k and j . . . j +k of a ring are order-equivalent
provided idi+a > idi+b if and only if idj+a > idj+b for b = 0 . . . k.
An algorithm is comparison-based if it cant do anything to IDs
but copy them and test for <. The state of such an algorithm is
modeled by some non-ID state together with a big bag of IDs, messages
have a pile of IDs attached to them, etc. Two states/messages are
equivalent under some mapping of IDs if you can translate the first
to the second by running all IDs through the mapping. Alternate
version: Executions of p1 and p2 are similar if they send messages in
the same direction(s) in the same rounds, declare themselves leader
at the same round; an algorithm is comparison-based based if orderequivalent rings yield similar executions for corresponding processes.
This can be turned into the explicit-copying-IDs model by replacing
the original protocol with a full-information protocol in which each

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

message is replaced by the ID and a complete history of the sending

process (including all messages it has every received).
Define an active round as a round in which at least 1 message is
sent. Claim: actions of i after k active rounds depends up to an orderequivalent mapping of ids only on the order-equivalence class of ids
in i k . . . i + k (the k-neighborhood of i). Proof: by induction on
k. Suppose i and j have order-equivalent (k 1)-neighborhoods; then
after k 1 active rounds they have equivalent states by the induction hypothesis. In inactive rounds, i and j both receive no messages
and update their states in the same way. In active rounds, i and j
receive order-equivalent messages and update their states in an orderequivalent way.
If we have an order of ids with a lot of order-equivalent k-neighborhoods,
then after k active rounds if one process sends a message, so do a lot
of other ones.
Now we just need to build a ring with a lot of order-equivalent neighborhoods. For n a power of 2 we can use the bit-reversal ring, e.g., id sequence
000, 100, 010, 110, 001, 101, 011, 111 (in binary) when n = 8. Figure 6.1 gives
a picture of what this looks like for n = 32.
For n not a power of 2 we look up Frederickson and Lynch [FL87] or Attiya et al. [ASW88]. In either case we get (n/k) order-equivalent members
of each equivalence class after k active rounds, giving (n/k) messages per
active round, which sums to (n log n).
For non-comparison-based algorithms we can still prove (n log n) messages for time-bounded algorithms, but it requires techniques from Ramsey theory, the branch of combinatorics that studies when large enough
structures inevitably contain substructures with certain properties.4 Here
time-bounded means that the running time cant depend on the size of
the ID space. See [AW04, 3.4.2] or [Lyn96, 3.7] for the textbook version,
or [FL87, 7] for the original result.
The intuition is that for any fixed protocol, if the ID space is large
enough, then there exists a subset of the ID space where the protocol
4
The classic example is Ramseys Theorem, which says that if you color the edges
of a complete graph red or blue, while trying to avoid having any subsets of k vertices
with all edges between them the same color, you will no longer be able to once the graph
is large enough (for any fixed k). See [GRS90] for much more on the subject of Ramsey
theory.

CHAPTER 6. LEADER ELECTION

35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
-5

Figure 6.1: Labels in the bit-reversal ring with n = 32

acts like a comparison-based protocol. So the existence of an O(f (n))message time-bounded protocol implies the existence of an O(f (n))-message
comparison-based protocol, and from the previous lower bound we know
f (n) is (n log n). Note that time-boundedness is necessary: we cant prove
the lower bound for non-time-bounded algorithms because of the i n trick.

Chapter 7

Synchronous agreement
Here well consider synchronous agreement algorithm with stopping failures,
where a process stops dead at some point, sending and receiving no further
messages. Well also consider Byzantine failures, where a process deviates
from its programming by sending arbitrary messages, but mostly just to see
how crash-failure algorithms hold up; for algorithms designed specifically for
a Byzantine model, see Chapter 8.
If the model has communication failures instead, we have the coordinated
attack problem from Chapter 3.

7.1

Problem definition

We use the usual synchronous model with n processes with binary inputs
and binary outputs. Up to f processes may fail at some point; when a
process fails, one or one or more of its outgoing messages are lost in the
round of failure and all outgoing messages are lost thereafter.
There are two variants on the problem, depending on whether we want
a useful algorithm (and so want strong conditions to make our algorithm
more useful) or a lower bound (and so want weak conditions to make our
lower bound more general). For algorithms, we will ask for these conditions
to hold:
Agreement All non-faulty processes decide the same value.
Validity If all processes start with the same input, all non-faulty processes
decide it.
Termination All non-faulty processes eventually decide.
43

CHAPTER 7. SYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT

For lower bounds, well replace validity with non-triviality (often called
validity in the literature):
Non-triviality There exist failure-free executions A and B that produce
different outputs.
Non-triviality follows from validity but doesnt imply validity; for example, a non-trivial algorithm might have the property that if all non-faulty
processes start with the same input, they all decide something else. Well
start by using non-triviality, agreement, and termination to show a lower
bound on the number of rounds needed to solve the problem.

7.2

Lower bound on rounds

Here we show that synchronous agreement requires at least f + 1 rounds

if f processes can fail. This proof is modeled on the one in [Lyn96, 6.7]
and works backwards from the final state; for a proof of the same result
that works in the opposite direction, see [AW04, 5.1.4]. The original result
(stated for Byzantine failures) is due to Dolev and Strong [DS83], based on
a more complicated proof due to Fischer and Lynch [FL82]; see the chapter
notes for Chapter 5 of [AW04] for more discussion of the history.
Like the similar proof for coordinated attack (3.2), the proof uses an
indistinguishability argument. But we have to construct a more complicated
chain of intermediate executions.
A crash failure at process i means that (a) in some round r, some or
all of the messages sent by i are not delivered, and (b) in subsequent rounds,
no messages sent by i are delivered. The intuition is that i keels over dead
in the middle of generating its outgoing messages for a round. Otherwise i
behaves perfectly correctly. A process that crashes at some point during an
execution is called faulty
We will show that if up to f processes can crash, and there are at least
f + 2 processes, then at least f + 1 rounds are needed (in some execution)
for any algorithm that satisfies agreement, termination, and non-triviality.
In particular, we will show that if all executions run in f or fewer rounds,
then the indistinguishability graph is connected; this implies non-triviality
doesnt hold, because (as in 3.2), two adjacent states must decide the same
value because of the agreement property.1
1

The same argument works with even a weaker version of non-triviality that omits the
requirement that A and B are failure-free, but well keep things simple.

CHAPTER 7. SYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT

Now for the proof. To simplify the argument, lets assume that all executions terminate in exactly f rounds (we can always have processes send
pointless chitchat to pad out short executions) and that every processes
sends a message to every other process in every round where it has not
crashed (more pointless chitchat). Formally, this means we have a sequence
of rounds 0, 1, 2, . . . , f 1 where each process sends a message to every other
process (assuming no crashes), and a final round f where all processes decide
on a value (without sending any additional messages).
We now want to take any two executions A and B and show that both
produce the same output. To do this, well transform As inputs into Bs
inputs one process at a time, crashing processes to hide the changes. The
problem is that just crashing the process whose input changed might change
the decision valueso we have to crash later witnesses carefully to maintain
indistinguishability all the way across the chain.
Lets say that a process p crashes fully in round r if it crashes in round
r and no round-r messages from p are delivered. The communication
pattern of an execution describes which messages are delivered between
processes without considering their contentsin particular, it tells us which
processes crash and what other processes they manage to talk to in the
round in which they crash.
With these definitions, we can state and prove a rather complicated
induction hypothesis:
Lemma 7.2.1. For any f -round protocol with n f + 2 process permitting
up to f crash failures; any process p; and any execution A in which at
most one processes crashes per round in rounds 0 . . . r 1, p crashes fully in
round r + 1, and no other processes crash; there is a sequence of executions
A = A0 A1 . . . Ak such that each Ai is indistinguishable from Ai+1 by some
process, each Ai has at most one crash per round, and the communication
pattern in Ak is identical to A except that p crashes fully in round r.
Proof. By induction on f r. If r = f , we just crash p in round r and
nobody else notices. For r < f , first crash p in round r instead of r + 1, but
deliver all of its round-r messages anyway (this is needed to make space for
some other process to crash in round r + 1). Then choose some message m
sent by p in round r, and let p0 be the recipient of m. We will show that we
can produce a chain of indistinguishable executions between any execution
in which m is delivered and the corresponding execution in which it is not.
If r = f 1, this is easy; only p0 knows whether m has been delivered,
and since n f +2, there exists another non-faulty p00 that cant distinguish
between these two executions, since p0 sends no messages in round f or later.

CHAPTER 7. SYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT

If r < f 1, we have to make sure p0 doesnt tell anybody about the missing
message.
By the induction hypothesis, there is a sequence of executions starting
with A and ending with p0 crashing fully in round r + 1, such that each execution is indistinguishable from its predecessor. Now construct the sequence
A (A with p0 crashing fully in r + 1)
(A with p0 crashing fully in r + 1 and m lost)
(A with m lost and p0 not crashing).
The first and last step apply the induction hypothesis; the middle one yields
indistinguishable executions since only p0 can tell the difference between m
arriving or not and its lips are sealed.
Weve shown that we can remove one message through a sequence of
executions where each pair of adjacent executions is indistinguishable to
some process. Now paste together n 1 such sequences (one per message)
to prove the lemma.
The rest of the proof: Crash some process fully in round 0 and then
change its input. Repeat until all inputs are changed.

7.3

Solutions

Here we give two solutions to synchronous agreement with crash failures.

The first, due to Dolev and Strong [DS83], is more practical but does not generalize well to Byzantine failures. The second is a variant on the exponential
information gathering algorithm of Pease, Shostak, and Lamport [PSL80],
which propagates enough information that it can in principle simulate any
other possible algorithm; it is mostly of interest because it can be used for
the Byzantine case as well.

7.3.1

Flooding

Well now show an algorithm that gets agreement, termination, and validity.
Validity here is stronger than the non-triviality condition used in the lower
bound, but the lower bound still applies: we cant do this in less than f + 1
rounds.
So lets do it in exactly f +1 rounds. There are two standard algorithms,
one of which generalizes to Byzantine processes under good conditions. Well
start with a simple approach based on flooding. This algorithm is described

CHAPTER 7. SYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT

in more detail in [AW04, 5.1.3] or [Lyn96, 6.2.1]; the original is due to

Dolev and Strong [DS83].
Assumes very trustworthy processes. Each process keeps a set of (process, input) pairs, initially just {(myId, myInput)}. At round r, I broadcast
my set to everybody and take the union of my set and all sets I receive.
At round f + 1, I decide on f (S), where f is some fixed function from sets
of process-input pairs to outputs that picks some input in S: for example,
f might take the input with the smallest process-id attached to it, take
the max of all known input values, or take the majority of all known input
values.
Lemma 7.3.1. After f + 1 rounds, all non-faulty processes have the same
set.
Proof. Let Sir be the set of process i after r rounds. What well really show
is that if there are no failures in round k, then Sir = Sjr = Sik+1 for all i,
j, and r > k. To show this, observe that no faults in round k means that
all processes that are still alive at the start of round k send their message
to all other processes. Let L be the set of live processes in round k. At the
S
end of round k, for i in L we have Sik+1 = jL Sjk = S. Now well consider
some round r = k + 1 + m and show by induction on m that Sik+m = S;
we already did m = 0, so for larger m notice that all messages are equal
to S and so Sik+1+m is the union of a whole bunch of Ss. So in particular
we have Sif +1 = S (since some failure-free round occurred in the preceding
f + 1 rounds) and everybody decides the same value f (S).
Flooding depends on being able to trust second-hand descriptions of
values; it may be that process 1 fails in round 0 so that only process 2 learns
its input. If process 2 can suddenly tell 3 (but nobody else) about the input
in round f + 1or worse, tell a different value to 3 and 4then we may
get disagreement. This remains true even if Byzantine processes cant fake
inputs (e.g., because an input value is really a triple (i, v, signature(v)) using
an unforgeable digital signature)the reason is that a Byzantine process
could horde some input (i, v, signature(v)) until the very last round and then
deliver it to only some of the non-faulty processes.

7.4

Exponential information gathering

The idea of exponential information gathering is that each process

will do a lot of gossiping, but now its state is no longer just a flat set of

CHAPTER 7. SYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT

inputs, but a tree describing who it heard what from. We build this tree
out of pairs of the form (id-sequence, input) where id-sequence is a sequence
of intermediaries with no repetitions and input is some input. A processs
state at each round is just a set of such pairs.
This is not really an improvement on flooding for crash failures, but it
can be used as a basis for building an algorithm for Byzantine agreement
(Chapter 8). Also useful as an example of a full-information algorithm,
in which every process records all that it knows about the execution; in
principle this allows the algorithm to simulate any other algorithm, which
can sometimes be useful for proving lower bounds.
See [AW04, 5.2.4] or [Lyn96, 6.2.3] for more details than we provide
here. The original exponential information-gathering algorithm (for Byzantine processes) is due to Pease, Shostak, and Lamport [PSL80].
Initial state is (hi, myInput).
At round r, process i broadcasts all pairs (w, v) where |w| = r and i
does not appear in w (these restrictions make the algorithm slightly less
exponential). Upon receiving (w, v) from j, i adds (wj, v) to its list. If no
message arrives from j in round r, i adds (wj, ) to its list for all nonrepeating w with |w| = r (this step can also be omitted).
A tree structure is obtained by letting w be the parent of wj for each j.
At round f + 1, apply some fixed decision rule to the set of all values
that appear in the tree (e.g. take the max, or decide on a default value v0
if there is more than one value in the tree). That this works follows pretty
much immediately from the fact that the set of node labels propagates just
as in the flooding algorithm (which is why EIG isnt really an improvement).
But there are some complications from the messages that arent sent due to
the i-not-in-w restriction on sending. So we have to write out a real proof.
Below is basically just following the presentation in [Lyn96].
Let val(w, i) be the value v such that (w, v) appears in is list at the
end of round f + 1. We dont worry about what earlier round it appears in
because we can compute that round as |w| + 1.

7.4.1

Basic invariants

val(hi, i) = is input.
Either val(wj, i) equals val(w, j) or val(wj, i) = and j didnt send a
message in round |w| + 1.
These are trivial.

CHAPTER 7. SYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT

7.4.2

Stronger facts

If val(xjy, i) 6= then val(x, j) = val(xjy, i). Apply the invariant

inductively.
If val(w, i) 6= then it equals val(hi, j) for some j. Either w = hi and
we win or we can apply the previous fact to w = jy.
If val(w, i) 6= then there is some w0 that doesnt contain i such that
val(w0 , i) = val(w, i). Let val(w, i) = v. If w doesnt contain i we are
done, otherwise w = w0 iy for some w0 and y, and thus val(w0 , i) = v.

7.4.3

The payoff

Let Sir be the set of values in is list after r rounds. Well show that Sif +1 =
Sjf +1 for all non-faulty i and j. Let v be in Sif +1 . Then v = val(w, i) for
some w that doesnt contain i (w here is really w0 from before). If |w| f ,
then i sends (w, v) to j at round |wi| and so val(wi, j) = v. Otherwise if
|w| = f + 1, w = xky for some non-faulty k, and from the first stronger fact
we have val(x, k) = v. Since k is non-faulty, it sends (x, v) to both i and j
in round |x| and we get val(xk, j) = v. Weve just shown v in Sif +1 implies
v in Sjf +1 , and by symmetry the converse holds, so the sets are equal.
This is a lot of work to avoid sending messages that contain my own id!
However, by tacking on digital signatures, we can solve Byzantine agreement
in the case where f < n/2: see [Lyn96, 6.2.4] for details.

7.4.4

The real payoff

Run the same algorithm in a Byzantine system with n > 3f processes (treating bogus-looking messages as nulls), but compute the decision value by
taking recursive majorities of non-null values down the tree. Details are in
8.2.1.

7.5

Variants

So far we have described binary consensus, since all inputs are 0 or 1. We

can also allow larger input sets. With crash failures, this allows a stronger
validity condition: the output must be equal to some input. Note that this
stronger condition doesnt work if we have Byzantine failures. (Exercise:
why not?)

Chapter 8

Byzantine agreement
Like synchronous agreement (as in Chapter 7) except that we replace crash
failures with Byzantine failures, where a faulty process can ignore its
programming and send any messages it likes. Since we are operating under
a universal quantifier, this includes the case where the Byzantine processes
appear to be colluding with each other under the control of a centralized
adversary.

8.1

Lower bounds

Well start by looking at lower bounds.

8.1.1

Minimum number of rounds

Weve already seen an f + 1 lower bound on rounds for crash failures (see
7.2). This lower bound applies a fortiori to Byzantine failures, since Byzantine failures can simulate crash failures.

8.1.2

Minimum number of processes

We can also show that we need n > 3f processes. For n = 3 and f = 1 the
intuition is that Byzantine B can play non-faulty A and C off against each
other, telling A that C is Byzantine and C that A is Byzantine. Since A is
telling C the same thing about B that B is saying about A, C cant tell the
difference and doesnt know who to believe. Unfortunately, this tragic soap
opera is not a real proof, since we havent actually shown that B can say
exactly the right thing to keep A and C from guessing that B is evil.

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

51
B0

C1
C

C0
B1

Figure 8.1: Three-process vs. six-process execution in Byzantine agreement

lower bound. Processes A0 and B0 in right-hand execution receive same
messages as in left-hand three-process execution with Byzantine C simulation C0 through C1 . So validity forces them to decide 0. A similar argument
using Byzantine A shows the same for C0 .
The real proof:1 Consider an artificial execution where (non-Byzantine)
A, B, and C are duplicated and then placed in a ring A0 B0 C0 A1 B1 C1 ,
where the digits indicate inputs. Well still keep the same code for n = 3
on A0 , B0 , etc., but when A0 tries to send a message to what it thinks of
as just C well send it to C1 while messages from B0 will instead go to C0 .
For any adjacent pair of processes (e.g. A0 and B0 ), the behavior of the rest
of the ring could be simulated by a single Byzantine process (e.g. C), so
each process in the 6-process ring behaves just as it does in some 3-process
execution with 1 Byzantine process. It follows that all of the processes
terminate and decide in the unholy 6-process Frankenexecution2 the same
value that they would in the corresponding 3-process Byzantine execution.
So what do they decide?
Given two processes with the same input, say, A0 and B0 , the giant execution is indistinguishable from an A0 B0 C execution where C is Byzantine
(see Figure 8.1. Validity says A0 and B0 must both decide 0. Since this
works for any pair of processes with the same input, we have each process
where B
is
deciding its input. But now consider the execution of C0 A1 B,
Byzantine. In the big execution, we just proved that C0 decides 0 and A1
decides 1, but since the C0 A1 B execution is indistinguishable from the big
execution to C0 and A1 , they do the same thing here and violate agreement.
This shows that with n = 3 and f = 1, we cant win. We can generalize
this to n = 3f . Suppose that there were an algorithm that solved Byzantine
agreement with n = 3f processes. Group the processes into groups of size f ,
1
The presentation here is based on [AW04, 5.2.3]. The original impossibility result
is due to Pease, Shostak, and Lamport [PSL80]. This particular proof is due to Fischer,
Lynch, and Merritt [FLM86].
2
Not a real word.

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

52
B0

B0
A0

A0
D0

D0
C0

C1
C

A1
B1
D1

Figure 8.2: Four-process vs. eight-process execution in Byzantine agreement

connectivity lower bound. Because Byzantine C can simulate C0 , D1 , B1 , A1 ,
and C1 , A0 , B0 and D0 must all decide 0 or risk violating validity.
and let each of the n = 3 processes simulate one group, with everybody in
the group getting the same input, which can only make things easier. Then
we get a protocol for n = 3 and f = 1, an impossibility.

8.1.3

Minimum connectivity

So far, weve been assuming a complete communication graph. If the graph is

not complete, we may not be able to tolerate as many failures. In particular,
we need the connectivity of the graph (minimum number of nodes that must
be removed to split it into two components) to be at least 2f +1. See [Lyn96,
6.5] for the full proof. The essential idea is that if we have an arbitrary
graph with a vertex cut of size k < 2f + 1, we can simulate it on a 4-process
graph where A is connected to B and C (but not D), B and C are connected
to each other, and D is connected only to B and C. Here B and C each
simulate half the processes in the size-k cut, A simulates all the processes
on one side of the cut and D all the processes on the other side. We then
construct an 8-process artificial execution with two non-faulty copies of each
of A, B, C, and D and argue that if one of B or C can be Byzantine then
the 8-process execution is indistinguishable to the remaining processes from
a normal 4-process execution. (See Figure 8.1.)
An argument similar to the n > 3f proof then shows we violate one
of validity or agreement: if we replacing C0 , C1 , and all the nodes on one
we force the remaining
side of the C0 + C1 cut with a single Byzantine C,
non-faulty nodes to decide their inputs or violate validity. But then doing

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

the same thing with B0 and B1 yields an execution that violates agreement.
Conversely, if we have connectivity 2f +1, then the processes can simulate
a general graph by sending each other messages along 2f + 1 predetermined
vertex-disjoint paths and taking the majority value as the correct message.
Since the f Byzantine processes can only corrupt one path each (assuming
the non-faulty processes are careful about who they forward messages from),
we get at least f + 1 good copies overwhelming the f bad copies. This
reduces the problem on a general graph with sufficiently high connectivity
to the problem on a complete graph, allowing Byzantine agreement to be
solved if the other lower bounds are met.

8.1.4

Weak Byzantine agreement

(Here we are following [Lyn96, 6.6]. The original result is due to Lamport [Lam83].)
Weak Byzantine agreement is like regular Byzantine agreement, but
validity is only required to hold if there are no faulty processes at all.3 If
there is a single faulty process, the non-faulty processes can output any value
regardless of their inputs (as long as they agree on it). Sadly, this weakening
doesnt improve things much: even weak Byzantine agreement can be solved
only if n 3f + 1.
Proof: As in the strong Byzantine agreement case, well construct a
many-process Frankenexecution to figure out a strategy for a single Byzantine process in a 3-process execution. The difference is that now the number
of processes in our synthetic execution is much larger, since we want to
build an execution where at least some of our test subjects think they are
in a non-Byzantine environment. The trick is to build a very big, highlysymmetric ring so that at least some of the processes are so far away from
the few points of asymmetry that might clue them in to their odd condition
that the protocol terminates before they notice.
Fix some protocol that allegedly solves weak Byzantine agreement, and
let r be the number of rounds for the protocol. Construct a ring of 6r processes A01 B01 C01 A02 B02 C02 . . . A0r B0r C0r A10 B10 C10 . . . A1r B1r C1r , where each
Xij runs the code for process X in the 3-process protocol with input i. For
each adjacent pair of processes, there is a 3-process Byzantine execution
3

An alternative might be to weaken agreement or termination to apply only if there

are no non-faulty processes, but this makes the problem trivial. If we weaken agreement,
we can just have each process decide whatever process 1 tells it to, and if we weaken
termination, we can do more or less the same thing except that we only terminate if all
the other processes tell us they heard the same value from process 1.

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

which is indistinguishable from the 6r-process execution for that pair: since
agreement holds in all Byzantine executions, each adjacent pair decides the
same value in the big execution and so either everybody decides 0 or everybody decides 1 in the big execution.
Now well show that means that validity is violated in some no-failures 3process execution. Well extract this execution by looking at the execution
of processes A0r/2 B0r/2 C0r/2 . The argument is that up to round r, any
input-0 process that is at least r steps in the ring away from the nearest
1-input process acts like the corresponding process in the all-0 no-failures
3-process execution. Since A0,r/2 is 3r/2 > r hops away from A1r and
similarly for C0,r/2 , our 3 stooges all decide 0 by validity. But now repeat
the same argument for A1,r/2 B1,r/2 C1,r/2 and get 3 new stooges that all
decide 1. This means that somewhere in between we have two adjacent
processes where one decides 0 and one decides 1, violating agreement in the
corresponding 3-process execution where the rest of the ring is replaced by
a single Byzantine process. This concludes the proof.
This result is a little surprising: we might expect that weak Byzantine
agreement could be solved by allowing a process to return a default value
if it notices anything that might hint at a fault somewhere. But this would
allow a Byzantine process to create disagreement revealing its bad behavior
to just one other process in the very last round of an execution otherwise
headed for agreement on the non-default value. The chosen victim decides
the default value, but since its the last round, nobody else finds out. Even
if the algorithm is doing something more sophisticated, examining the 6rprocess execution will tell the Byzantine process exactly when and how to
start acting badly.

8.2

Upper bounds

Here we describe two upper bounds for Byzantine agreement, one of which
gets an optimal number of rounds at the cost of many large messages, and
the other of which gets smaller messages at the cost of more rounds. (We
are following 5.2.45.2.5 of [AW04] in choosing these algorithms.) Neither
of these algorithms is state-of-the-art, but they demonstrate some of the
issues in solving Byzantine agreement without the sometimes-complicated
optimizations needed to get all the parameters of the algorithm down simultaneously.

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

8.2.1

Exponential information gathering gets n = 3f + 1

Well show that a variant of Exponential Information Gathering as defined in

7.4 works with n 3f + 1 in f + 1 rounds. This is the same technique used
by Pease, Shostak, and Lamport [PSL80] to show that their impossibility
result is tight.
Recall EIG gives us at each node a set of pairs (path, value) where path
spans all sequences of 0 to n distinct ids and value is the input value forwarded along that path. We write val(w, i) for the value stored in is list at
the end of the protocol that is associated with path w. Because we cant
trust these val(w, i) values to be an accurate description of any processs
input if there is a Byzantine process in w, each process computes for itself
replacement values val0 (w, i) that use majority voting to try to get a more
trustworthy picture of the original inputs.
Formally, we think of the set of paths as a tree where w is the parent of
wj for each path w and each id j not in w. To apply EIG in the Byzantine
model, ill-formed messages received from j are treated as missing messages,
but otherwise the data-collecting part of EIG proceeds as in the crash failure
model. However, we compute the decision value from the last-round values
recursively as follows. First replace any missing pair involving a path w with
|w| = f + 1 with (w, 0). Then for each path w, define val0 (w, i) to be the
majority value among val0 (wj, i) for all j, or val(w, i) if |w| = f + 1. Finally,
we have process i decide val0 (hi, i) (which it can compute locally from its
own stored values val(w, i)).
The val0 is a reconstruction of old values from later ones: as we move
up the tree from wj to w we are moving backwards in time, until in the
end we get the decision value val0 (hi, i) as a majority of reconstructed inputs
val0 (j, i). One way to think about this is that I dont trust j to give me
the right value for wjeven when w = hi and j is just reporting its own
inputso instead a take a majority of values of wj that j allegedly reported
to other people. But since I dont trust those other people either, I use the
same process recursively to construct those reports.
8.2.1.1

Proof of correctness

This is just a sketch of the proof from [Lyn96, 6.3.2]; essentially the same
argument appears in [AW04, 5.2.4].
We start with a basic observation that good processes send and record
values correctly:

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

Lemma 8.2.1. If i, j, and k are all non-faulty then for all w, val(wk, i) =
val(wk, j) = val(w, k).
Proof. Trivial: k announces the same value val(w, k) to both i and j.
More involved is this lemma, which says that when we reconstruct a
value for a trustworthy process at some level, we get the same value that
it sent us. In particular this will be used to show that the reconstructed
inputs val0 (j, i) are all equal to the real inputs for good processes.
Lemma 8.2.2. If j is non-faulty then val0 (wj, i) = val(wj, i) for all nonfaulty i and all w.
Proof. By induction on f + 1 |wj|. If |wj| = f + 1, then val0 (wj, i) =
val(wj, i) = val(w, j) = val(wj, i). If |wj| < f + 1, then val(wj, k) = val(w, j)
for all non-faulty k. It follows that val(wjk, i) = val(w, j) for all non-faulty
i and k (that do no appear in w). The bad guys report at most f bad
values val(wj, k 0 ), but the good guys report at least n f |wj| good values
val(wj, k). Since n 3f + 1 and |wj| f , we have n f |wj| 3f + 1
f f f + 1 good values, which are a majority.
We call a node w common val0 (w, i) = val0 (w, j) for all non-faulty i, j.
Lemma 8.2.2 says that wk is common if k is non-faulty. We can also show
that any node whose children are all common is also common, whether or
not the last process in its label is faulty.
Lemma 8.2.3. Let wk be common for all k. Then w is common.
Proof. Recall that, for |w| < f + 1, val0 (w, i) is the majority value among
all val0 (wk, i). If all wk are common, then val0 (wk, i) = val0 (wk, j) for all
non-faulty i and j, so i and j compute the same majority values and get
val0 (w, i) = val0 (w, j).
We can now prove the full result.
Theorem 8.2.4. Exponential information gathering using f + 1 rounds in
a synchronous Byzantine system with at most f faulty processes satisfies
validity and agreement, provided n 3f + 1.
Proof. Validity: Immediate application of Lemmas 8.2.1 and 8.2.2 when
w = hi. We have val0 (j, i) = val(j, i) = val(hi, j) for all non-faulty j and i,
which means that a majority of the val0 (j, i) values equal the common input
and thus so does val0 (hi, i).

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

Agreement: Observe that every path has a common node on it, since a
path travels through f +1 nodes and one of them is good. If we then suppose
that the root is not common: by Lemma 8.2.3, it must have a not-common
child, that node must have a not-common child, etc. But this constructs
a path from the root to a leaf with no not-common nodes, which we just
proved cant happen.

8.2.2

Phase king gets constant-size messages

The following algorithm, based on work of Berman, Garay, and Perry[BGP89],

achieves Byzantine agreement in 2(f + 1) rounds using constant-size messages, provided n 4f + 1. The description here is drawn from [AW04,
5.2.5]. The original Berman-Garay-Perry paper gives somewhat better
bounds, but theyre more complicated.
8.2.2.1

The algorithm

The basic idea of the algorithm is that we avoid the recursive majority voting
of EIG by running a vote in each of f +1 phases through a phase king, some
process chosen in advance to run the phase. Since the number of phases
exceeds the number of faults, we eventually get a non-faulty phase king.
The algorithm is structured so that one non-faulty phase king is enough
to generate agreement and subsequent faulty phase kings cant undo the
agreement.
Pseudocode appears in Algorithm 8.1. Each processes i maintains an
array pref i [j], where j ranges over all process ids. There are also utility
values majority, kingMajority and multiplicity for each process that are used
to keep track of what it hears from the other processes. Initially, pref i [i] is
just is input and pref i [j] = 0 for j 6= i.
The idea of the algorithm is that in each phase, everybody announces
their current preference (initially the inputs). If the majority of these preferences is large enough (e.g. all inputs are the same), everybody adopts
the majority preference. Otherwise everybody adopts the preference of the
phase king. The majority rule means that once the processes agree, they
continue to agree despite bad phase kings. The phase king rule allows a
good phase king to end disagreement. By choosing a different king in each
phase, after f +1 phases, some king must be good. This intuitive description
is justified below.

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

1
2
3

4
5
6
7

9
10
11
12
13
14
15

pref i [i] = input

for j 6= i do pref i [j] = 0
for k 1 to f + 1 do
// First round of phase k
send pref i [i] to all processes (including myself)
pref i [j] vj , where vj is the value received from process j
majority majority value in pref i
multiplicity number of times majority appears in pref i
// Second round of phase k
if i = k then
// I am the phase king
send majority to all processes
receive kingMajority from phase king
if multiplicity > n/2 + f then
pref i [i] = majority
else
pref i [i] = kingMajority
return pref i [i]
Algorithm 8.1: Byzantine agreement: phase king

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

8.2.2.2

Proof of correctness

Termination is immediate from the algorithm.

For validity, suppose all inputs are v. Well show that all non-faulty i
have pref i [i] = v after every phase. In the first round of each phase, process
i receives at least n f messages containing v; since n 4f + 1, we have
n f 3f + 1 and n/2 + f (4f + 1)/2 + f = 3f + 1/2, and thus these
n f messages exceed the n/2 + f threshold for adopting them as the new
preference. So all non-faulty processes ignore the phase king and stick with
v, eventually deciding v after round 2(f + 1).
For agreement, well ignore all phases up to the first phase with a nonfaulty phase king. Let k be the first such phase, and assume that the pref
values are set arbitrarily at the start of this phase. We want to argue that
at the end of the phase, all non-faulty processes have the same preference.
There are two ways that a process can set its new preference in the second
round of the phase:
1. The process i observes a majority of more than n/2+f identical values
v and ignores the phase king. Of these values, more than n/2 of them
were sent by non-faulty processes. So the phase king also receives these
values (even if the faulty processes change their stories) and chooses
v as its majority value. Similarly, if any other process j observes a
majority of n/2 + f identical values, the two > n/2 non-faulty parts
of the majorities overlap, and so j also chooses v.
2. The process i takes its value from the phase king. Weve already shown
that i then agrees with any j that sees a big majority; but since the
phase king is non-faulty, process i will agree with any process j that
also takes its new preference from the phase king.
This shows that after any phase with a non-faulty king, all processes
agree. The proof that the non-faulty processes continue to agree is the same
as for validity.
8.2.2.3

Performance of phase king

Its not hard to see that this algorithm sends exactly (f +1)(n2 +n) messages
of 1 bit each (assuming 1-bit inputs). The cost is doubling the minimum
number of rounds and reducing the tolerance for Byzantine processes. As
mentioned earlier, a variant of phase-king with 3-round phases gets optimal
fault-tolerance with 3(f + 1) rounds (but 2-bit messages). Still better is

CHAPTER 8. BYZANTINE AGREEMENT

a rather complicated descendant of the EIG algorithm due to Garay and

Moses [GM98], which gets f + 1 rounds with n 3f + 1 while still having
polynomial message traffic.

Chapter 9

Impossibility of
asynchronous agreement
The Fischer-Lynch-Paterson (FLP) result [FLP85] says that you cant do
agreement in an asynchronous message-passing system if even one crash
failure is allowed, unless you augment the basic model in some way, e.g.
by adding randomization or failure detectors. After its initial publication,
it was quickly generalized to other models including asynchronous shared
memory [LAA87], and indeed the presentation of the result in [Lyn96, 12.2]
is given for shared-memory first, with the original result appearing in [Lyn96,
17.2.3] as a corollary of the ability of message passing to simulate shared
memory. In these notes, Ill present the original result; the dependence on
the model is surprisingly limited, and so most of the proof is the same for
both shared memory (even strong versions of shared memory that support
e.g. atomic snapshots1 ) and message passing.
Section 5.3 of [AW04] gives a very different version of the proof, where
it is shown first for two processes in shared memory, then generalized to n
processes in shared memory by adapting the classic Borowsky-Gafni simulation [BG93] to show that two processes with one failure can simulate n
processes with one failure. This is worth looking at (its an excellent example of the power of simulation arguments, and BG simulation is useful in
many other contexts) but we will stick with the original argument, which
is simpler. We will look at this again when we consider BG simulation in
Chapter 27.
1

Chapter 19.

CHAPTER 9. IMPOSSIBILITY OF ASYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT62

9.1

Agreement

Usual rules: agreement (all non-faulty processes decide the same value),
termination (all non-faulty processes eventually decide some value), validity (for each possible decision value, there an execution in which that
value is chosen). Validity can be tinkered with without affecting the proof
much.
To keep things simple, we assume the only two decision values are 0 and
1.

9.2

Failures

A failure is an internal action after which all send operations are disabled.
The adversary is allowed one failure per execution. Effectively, this means
that any group of n 1 processes must eventually decide without waiting
for the n-th, because it might have failed.

9.3

Steps

The FLP paper uses a notion of steps that is slightly different from the
send and receive actions of the asynchronous message-passing model weve
been using. Essentially a step consists of receiving zero or more messages
followed by doing a finite number of sends. To fit it into the model weve
been using, well define a step as either a pair (p, m), where p receives
message m and performs zero or more sends in response, or (p, ), where
p receives nothing and performs zero or more sends. We assume that the
processes are deterministic, so the messages sent (if any) are determined by
ps previous state and the message received. Note that these steps do not
correspond precisely to delivery and send events or even pairs of delivery
and send events, because what message gets sent in response to a particular
delivery may change as the result of delivering some other message; but this
wont affect the proof.
The fairness condition essentially says that if (p, m) or (p, ) is continuously enabled it eventually happens. Since messages are not lost, once
(p, m) is enabled in some configuration C, it is enabled in all successor configurations until it occurs; similarly (p, ) is always enabled. So to ensure
fairness, we have to ensure that any non-faulty process eventually performs
any enabled step.

CHAPTER 9. IMPOSSIBILITY OF ASYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT63

Comment on notation: I like writing the new configuration reached by
applying a step e to C like this: Ce. The FLP paper uses e(C).

9.4

Bivalence and univalence

The core of the FLP argument is a strategy allowing the adversary (who
controls scheduling) to steer the execution away from any configuration in
which the processes reach agreement. The guidepost for this strategy is
the notion of bivalence, where a configuration C is bivalent if there exist
traces T0 and T1 starting from C that lead to configurations CT0 and CT1
where all processes decide 0 and 1 respectively. A configuration that is not
bivalent is univalent, or more specifically 0-valent or 1-valent depending
on whether all executions starting in the configuration produce 0 or 1 as the
decision value. (Note that bivalence or univalence are the only possibilities
because of termination.) The important fact we will use about univalent
configurations is that any successor to an x-valent configuration is also xvalent.
Its clear that any configuration where some process has decided is not
bivalent, so if the adversary can keep the protocol in a bivalent configuration
forever, it can prevent the processes from ever deciding. The adversarys
strategy is to start in an initial bivalent configuration C0 (which we must
prove exists) and then choose only bivalent successor configurations (which
we must prove is possible). A complication is that if the adversary is only
allowed one failure, it must eventually allow any message in transit to a
non-faulty process to be received and any non-faulty process to send its
outgoing messages, so we have to show that the policy of avoiding univalent
configurations doesnt cause problems here.

9.5

Existence of an initial bivalent configuration

We can specify an initial configuration by specifying the inputs to all processes. If one of these initial configurations is bivalent, we are done. Otherwise, let C and C 0 be two initial configurations that differ only in the input
of one process p; by assumption, both C and C 0 are univalent. Consider two
executions starting with C and C 0 in which process p is faulty; we can arrange for these executions to be indistinguishable to all the other processes,
so both decide the same value x. It follows that both C and C 0 are x-valent.
But since any two initial configurations can be connected by some chain of

CHAPTER 9. IMPOSSIBILITY OF ASYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT64

such indistinguishable configurations, we have that all initial configurations
are x-valent, which violations validity.

9.6

Staying in a bivalent configuration

Now start in a failure-free bivalent configuration C with some step e = (p, m)

or e = (p, ) enabled in C. Let S be the set of configurations reachable
from C without doing e or failing any processes, and let e(S) be the set
of configurations of the form C 0 e where C 0 is in S. (Note that e is always
enabled in S, since once enabled the only way to get rid of it is to deliver
the message.) We want to show that e(S) contains a failure-free bivalent
configuration.
The proof is by contradiction: suppose that C 0 e is univalent for all C 0
in S. We will show first that there are C0 and C1 in S such that each Ci e
is i-valent. To do so, consider any pair of i-valent Ai reachable from C; if
Ai is in S, let Ci = Ai . If Ai is not in S, let Ci be the last configuration
before executing e on the path from C to Ai (Ci e is univalent in this case
by assumption).
So now we have C0 e and C1 e with Ci e i-valent in each case. Well now go
hunting for some configuration D in S and step e0 such that De is 0-valent
but De0 e is 1-valent (or vice versa); such a pair exists because S is connected
and so some step e0 crosses the boundary between the C 0 e = 0-valent and
the C 0 e = 1-valent regions.
By a case analysis on e and e0 we derive a contradiction:
1. Suppose e and e0 are steps of different processes p and p0 . Let both
steps go through in either order. Then Dee0 = De0 e, since in an
asynchronous system we cant tell which process received its message
first. But De is 0-valent, which implies Dee0 is also 0-valent, which
contradicts De0 e being 1-valent.
2. Now suppose e and e0 are steps of the same process p. Again we let
both go through in either order. It is not the case now that Dee0 =
De0 e, since p knows which step happened first (and may have sent
messages telling the other processes). But now we consider some finite
sequence of steps e1 e2 . . . ek in which no message sent by p is delivered
and some process decides in Dee1 . . . ek (this occurs since the other
processes cant distinguish Dee0 from the configuration in which p
died in D, and so have to decide without waiting for messages from
p). This execution fragment is indistinguishable to all processes except

CHAPTER 9. IMPOSSIBILITY OF ASYNCHRONOUS AGREEMENT65

p from De0 ee1 . . . ek , so the deciding process decides the same value i
in both executions. But Dee0 is 0-valent and De0 e is 1-valent, giving
a contradiction.
It follows that our assumption was false, and there is some reachable
bivalent configuration C 0 e.
Now to construct a fair execution that never decides, we start with a
bivalent configuration, choose the oldest enabled action and use the above
to make it happen while staying in a bivalent configuration, and repeat.

9.7

Generalization to other models

To apply the argument to another model, the main thing is to replace the
definition of a step and the resulting case analysis of 0-valent De0 e vs 1-valent
Dee0 to whatever steps are available in the other model. For example, in
asynchronous shared memory, if e and e0 are operations on different memory
locations, they commute (just like steps of different processes), and if they
are operations on the same location, either they commute (e.g. two reads)
or only one process can tell whether both happened (e.g. with a write and
a read, only the reader knows, and with two writes, only the first writer
knows). Killing the witness yields two indistinguishable configurations with
different valencies, a contradiction.
We are omitting a lot of details here. See [Lyn96, 12.2] for the real
proof, or Loui and Abu-Amara [LAA87] for the generalization to shared
memory, or Herlihy [Her91b] for similar arguments for a wide variety of
shared-memory primitives. We will see many of these latter arguments in
Chapter 18.

Chapter 10

Paxos
The Paxos algorithm for consensus in a message-passing system was first
described by Lamport in 1990 in a tech report that was widely considered
to be a joke (see http://research.microsoft.com/users/lamport/pubs/
pubs.html#lamport-paxos for Lamports description of the history). The
algorithm was finally published in 1998 [Lam98], and after the algorithm
continued to be ignored, Lamport finally gave up and translated the results
into readable English [Lam01]. It is now understood to be one of the most
efficient practical algorithms for achieving consensus in a message-passing
system with failure detectors, mechanisms that allow processes to give up
on other stalled processes after some amount of time (which cant be done
in a normal asynchronous system because giving up can be made to happen
immediately by the adversary).
We will describe only the basic Paxos algorithm. The WikiPedia article on Paxos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxos) gives a remarkably
good survey of subsequent developments and applications.

10.1

Motivation: replicated state machines

A replicated state machine is an object that is replicated across multiple

machines, with some mechanism for propagating operations on the object
to all replicas. Formally, we think of an object as having a set of states
Q, together with a transition relation that maps pairs of operations and
states to pairs of responses and states. Applying an operation to the object
means that we change the state to the output of and return the given
response. If we have failures, we will need some sort of consensus protocol
to coordinate which operations are applied and in what order. Paxos is a
66

CHAPTER 10. PAXOS

common choice, although other choices of consensus protocols will work too.

10.2

The Paxos algorithm

The algorithm runs in a message-passing model with asynchrony and less

than n/2 crash failures (but not Byzantine failures, at least in the original
algorithm). As always, we want to get agreement, validity, and termination.
The Paxos algorithm itself is mostly concerned with guaranteeing agreement
and validity while allowing for the possibility of termination if there is a long
enough interval in which no process restarts the protocol.
Processes are classified as proposers, accepters, and learners (a single process may have all three roles). The idea is that a proposer attempts
to ratify a proposed decision value (from an arbitrary input set) by collecting acceptances from a majority of the accepters, and this ratification is
observed by the learners. Agreement is enforced by guaranteeing that only
one proposal can get the votes of a majority of accepters, and validity follows
from only allowing input values to be proposed. The tricky part is ensuring
that we dont get deadlock when there are more than two proposals or when
some of the processes fail. The intuition behind how this works is that any
proposer can effectively restart the protocol by issuing a new proposal (thus
dealing with lockups), and there is a procedure to release accepters from
their old votes if we can prove that the old votes were for a value that wont
be getting a majority any time soon.
To organize this vote-release process, we attach a distinct proposal number to each proposal. The safety properties of the algorithm dont depend
on anything but the proposal numbers being distinct, but since higher numbers override lower numbers, to make progress well need them to increase
over time. The simplest way to do this in practice is to make the proposal
number be a timestamp with the proposers id appended to break ties. We
could also have the proposer poll the other processes for the most recent
proposal number theyve seen and add 1 to it.
The revoting mechanism now works like this: before taking a vote, a
proposer tests the waters by sending a prepare(n) message to all accepters,
where n is the proposal number. An accepter responds to this with a promise
never to accept any proposal with a number less than n (so that old proposals
dont suddenly get ratified) together with the highest-numbered proposal
that the accepter has accepted (so that the proposer can substitute this
value for its own, in case the previous value was in fact ratified). If the
proposer receives a response from a majority of the accepters, the proposer

CHAPTER 10. PAXOS

then does a second phase of voting where it sends accept(n, v) to all accepters
and wins if receives a majority of votes.
So for each proposal, the algorithm proceeds as follows:
1. The proposer sends a message prepare(n) to all accepters. (Sending
to only a majority of the accepters is enough, assuming they will all
respond.)
2. Each accepter compares n to the highest-numbered proposal for which
it has responded to a prepare message. If n is greater, it responds with
ack(n, v, nv ), where v is the highest-numbered proposal it has accepted
and nv is the number of that proposal (or and 0 if there is no such
proposal). (An optimization at this point is to allow the accepter to
send back nack(n0 ) where n0 is some higher number to let the proposer
know that its doomed and should back off and try againthis keeps
a confused proposer who thinks its the future from locking up the
protocol until 2037.)
3. The proposer waits (possibly forever) to receive ack from a majority of accepters. If any ack contained a value, it sets v to the most
recent (in proposal number ordering) value that it received. It then
sends accept(n, v) to all accepters (or just a majority). You should
think of accept as a demand (Accept!) rather than acquiescence (I
accept)the accepters still need to choose whether to accept or not.
4. Upon receiving accept(n, v), an accepter accepts v unless it has already
received prepare(n0 ) for some n0 > n. If a majority of acceptors accept
the value of a given proposal, that value becomes the decision value of
the protocol.
Note that acceptance is a purely local phenomenon; additional messages
are needed to detect which if any proposals have been accepted by a majority
of accepters. Typically this involves a fourth round, where accepters send
accepted(n, v) to all learners (often just the original proposer).
There is no requirement that only a single proposal is sent out (indeed,
if proposers can fail we will need to send out more to jump-start the protocol). The protocol guarantees agreement and validity no matter how many
proposers there are and no matter how often they start.

CHAPTER 10. PAXOS

10.3

Informal analysis: how information flows between rounds

Call a round the collection of all messages labeled with some particular
proposal n. The structure of the algorithm simulates a sequential execution
in which higher-numbered rounds follow lower-numbered ones, even though
there is no guarantee that this is actually the case in a real execution.
When an acceptor sends ack(n, v, nv ), it is telling the round-n proposer
the last value preceding round n that it accepted. The rule that an acceptor
only acknowledges a proposal higher than any proposal it has previously acknowledged prevents it from sending information back in timethe round
nv in an acknowledgment is always less than n. The rule that an acceptor
doesnt accept any proposal earlier than a round it has acknowledged means
that the value v in an ack(n, v, nv ) message never goes out of datethere is
no possibility that an acceptor might retroactively accept some later value
in round n0 with nv < n0 < n. So the ack message values tell a consistent
story about the history of the protocol, even if the rounds execute out of
order.
The second trick is to use overlapping majorities to make sure that any
value that is accepted is not lost. If the only way to decide on a value in round
n is to get a majority of acceptors to accept it, and the only way to make
progress in round n0 is to get acknowledgments from a majority of acceptors,
these two majorities overlap. So in particular the overlapping process reports
the round-n proposal value to the proposer in round n0 , and we can show
by induction on n0 that this round-n proposal value becomes the proposal
value in all subsequent rounds that proceed past the acknowledgment stage.
So even though it may not be possible to detect that a decision has been
reached in round n (say, because some of the acceptors in the accepting
majority die without telling anybody what they did), no later round will be
able to choose a different value. This ultimately guarantees agreement.

10.4

Safety properties

We now present a more formal analysis of the Paxos protocol. We consider only the safety properties of the protocol, corresponding to validity
and agreement; without additional assumptions, Paxos does not guarantee
termination.
Call a value chosen if it is accepted by a majority of accepters. The
safety properties of Paxos are:

CHAPTER 10. PAXOS

No value is chosen unless it is first proposed. (This gives validity.)

No two distinct values are both chosen. (This gives agreement.)
The first property is immediate from examination of the algorithm.
For the second property, we need some invariants. The intuition is that if
some value is chosen, then a majority of accepters have accepted it for some
proposal number n. Any proposal sent in an accept message with a higher
number n0 must be sent by a proposer that has seen an overlapping majority
respond to its prepare(n0 ) message. If we consider the process that overlaps,
this process must have accepted v before it received prepare(n0 ), since it cant
accept afterwards, and unless it has accepted some other proposal since, it
responds with ack(n0 , v, n). If these are the only values that the proposer
receives with number n or greater, it chooses v as its new value.
Worrying about what happens in rounds between n and n0 is messy, so
well use two formal invariants (taken more or less directly from Lamports
paper):
Invariant 1 An accepter accepts a proposal numbered n if and only if it
has not responded to a prepare message with a number n0 > n.
Invariant 2 For any v and n, if a proposal with value v and number n has
been issued (by sending accept messages), then there is a majority of
accepters S such that either (a) no accepter in S has accepted any
proposal numbered less than n, or (b) v is the value of the highestnumbered proposal among all proposals numbered less than n accepted
by at least one accepter in S.
The proof of the first invariant is immediate from the rule for issuing
acks.
The proof of the second invariant follows from the first invariant and the
proposers rule for issuing proposals: it can only do so after receiving ack
from a majority of accepterscall this set Sand the value it issues is either
the proposals initial value if all responses are ack(n, , 0), or the maximum
value sent in by accepters in S if some responses are ack(n, v, nv ). In the
first case we have case (a) of the invariant: nobody accepted any proposals
numbered less than n before responding, and they cant afterwards. In the
second case we have case (b): the maximum response value is the maximumnumbered accepted value within S at the time of each response, and again no
new values numbered less than n will be accepted afterwards. Amazingly,
none of this depends on the temporal ordering of different proposals or

CHAPTER 10. PAXOS

messages: the accepters enforce that their acks are good for all time by
refusing to change their mind about earlier rounds later.
So now we suppose that some value v is eventually accepted by a majority
T with number n. Then we can show by induction on proposal number that
all proposals issued with higher numbers have the same value (even if they
were issued earlier). For any proposal accept(v 0 , n0 ) with n0 > n, there is
a majority S (which must overlap with T ) for which either case (a) holds
(a contradictiononce the overlapping accepter finally accepts, it violates
the requirement that no proposal less than n0 has been accepted) or case
(b) holds (in which case by the induction hypothesis v 0 is the value of some
earlier proposal with number n0 n, implying v 0 = v).

10.5

Learning the results

Somebody has to find out that a majority accepted a proposal in order to

get a decision value out. The usual way to do this is to have a fourth round
of messages where the accepters send chose(v, n) to some designated learner
(usually just the original proposer), which can then notify everybody else if
it doesnt fail first. If the designated learner does fail first, we can restart by
issuing a new proposal (which will get replaced by the previous successful
proposal because of the safety properties).

10.6

Liveness properties

Wed like the protocol to terminate eventually. Suppose there is a single

proposer, and that it survives long enough to collect a majority of acks
and to send out accepts to a majority of the accepters. If everybody else
cooperates, we get termination in 3 message delays.
If there are multiple proposers, then they can step on each other. For
example, its enough to have two carefully-synchronized proposers alternate
sending out prepare messages to prevent any accepter from every accepting
(since an accepter promises not to accept accept(n, v) once it has responded
to prepare(n + 1)). The solution is to ensure that there is eventually some
interval during which there is exactly one proposer who doesnt fail. One
way to do this is to use exponential random backoff (as popularized by
Ethernet): when a proposer decides its not going to win a round (e.g. by
receiving a nack or by waiting long enough to realize it wont be getting
any more acks soon), it picks some increasingly large random delay before

CHAPTER 10. PAXOS

starting a new round; thus two or more will eventually start far enough
apart in time that one will get done without interference.
A more abstract solution is to assume some sort of weak leader election
mechanism, which tells each accepter who the legitimate proposer is at
each time. The accepters then discard messages from illegitimate proposers,
which prevents conflict at the cost of possibly preventing progress. Progress
is however obtained if the mechanism eventually reaches a state where a
majority of the accepters bow to the same non-faulty proposer long enough
for the proposal to go through.
Such a weak leader election method is an example of a more general
class of mechanisms known as failure detectors, in which each process
gets hints about what other processes are faulty that eventually converge to
reality. The particular failure detector in this case is known as the failure
detector; there are other still weaker ones that we will talk about later that
can also be used to solve consensus. We will discuss failure detectors in
detail in Chapter 11.

Chapter 11

Failure detectors
Failure detectors were proposed by Chandra and Toueg [CT96] as a mechanism for solving consensus in an asynchronous message-passing system with
crash failures by distinguishing between slow processes and dead processes.
The basic idea is that each process has attached to it a failure detector module that continuously outputs an estimate of which processes in the system
have failed. The output need not be correct; indeed, the main contribution
of Chandra and Touegs paper (and a companion paper by Chandra, Hadzilacos, and Toueg [CHT96]) is characterizing just how bogus the output of a
failure detector can be and still be useful.
We will mostly follow Chandra and Toueg in these notes; see the paper
for the full technical details.
To emphasize that the output of a failure detector is merely a hint at
the actual state of the world, a failure detector (or the process its attached
to) is said to suspect a process at time t if it outputs failed at that time.
Failure detectors can then be classified based on when their suspicions are
correct.
We use the usual asynchronous message-passing model, and in particular
assume that non-faulty processes execute infinitely often, get all their messages delivered, etc. From time to time we will need to talk about time, and
unless we are clearly talking about real time this just means any steadily
increasing count (e.g., of total events), and will be used only to describe the
ordering of events.

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

11.1

How to build a failure detector

Failure detectors are only interesting if you can actually build them. In
a fully asynchronous system, you cant (this follows from the FLP result
and the existence of failure-detector-based consensus protocols). But with
timeouts, its not hard: have each process ping each other process from
time to time, and suspect the other process if it doesnt respond to the ping
within twice the maximum round-trip time for any previous ping. Assuming
that ping packets are never lost and there is an (unknown) upper bound on
message delay, this gives what is known as an eventually perfect failure
detector: once the max round-trip times rise enough and enough time has
elapsed for the live processes to give up on the dead ones, all and only dead
processes are suspected.

11.2

Classification of failure detectors

Chandra and Toueg define eight classes of failure detectors, based on when
they suspect faulty processes and non-faulty processes. Suspicion of faulty
processes comes under the heading of completeness; of non-faulty processes, accuracy.

11.2.1

Degrees of completeness

Strong completeness Every faulty process is eventually permanently suspected by every non-faulty process.
Weak completeness Every faulty process is eventually permanently suspected by some non-faulty process.
There are two temporal logic operators embedded in these statements:
eventually permanently means that there is some time t0 such that for
all times t t0 , the process is suspected. Note that completeness says
nothing about suspecting non-faulty processes: a paranoid failure detector
that permanently suspects everybody has strong completeness.

11.2.2

Degrees of accuracy

These describe what happens with non-faulty processes, and with faulty
processes that havent crashed yet.
Strong accuracy No process is suspected (by anybody) before it crashes.

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

Weak accuracy Some non-faulty process is never suspected.

Eventual strong accuracy After some initial period of confusion, no process is suspected before it crashes. This can be simplified to say that
no non-faulty process is suspected after some time, since we can take
end of the initial period of chaos as the time at which the last crash
occurs.
Eventual weak accuracy After some initial period of confusion, some
non-faulty process is never suspected.
Note that strong and weak mean different things for accuracy vs
completeness: for accuracy, we are quantifying over suspects, and for completeness, we are quantifying over suspectors. Even a weakly-accurate failure
detector guarantees that all processes trust the one visibly good process.

11.2.3

Boosting completeness

It turns out that any weakly-complete failure detector can be boosted to give
strong completeness. Recall that the difference between weak completeness
and strong completeness is that with weak completeness, somebody suspects
a dead process, while with strong completeness, everybody suspects it. So
to boost completeness we need to spread the suspicion around a bit. On
the other hand, we dont want to break accuracy in the process, so there
needs to be some way to undo a premature rumor of somebodys death.
The simplest way to do this is to let the alleged corpse speak for itself: I
will suspect you from the moment somebody else reports you dead until the
moment you tell me otherwise.
Pseudocode is given in Algorithm 11.1.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

initially do
suspects
while true do
Let S be the set of all processes my weak detector suspects.
Send S to all processes.
upon receiving S from q do
suspects (suspects p) \ {q}
Algorithm 11.1: Boosting completeness

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

Its not hard to see that this boosts completeness: if p crashes, somebodys weak detector eventually suspects it, this process tells everybody
else, and p never contradicts it. So eventually everybody suspects p.
What is slightly trickier is showing that it preserves accuracy. The essential idea is this: if there is some good-guy process p that everybody trusts
forever (as in weak accuracy), then nobody ever reports p as suspectthis
also covers strong accuracy since the only difference is that now every nonfaulty process falls into this category. For eventual weak accuracy, wait for
everybody to stop suspecting p, wait for every message ratting out p to be
delivered, and then wait for p to send a message to everybody. Now everybody trusts p, and nobody every suspects p again. Eventual strong accuracy
is again similar.
This will justify ignoring the weakly-complete classes.

11.2.4

Failure detector classes

Two degrees of completeness times four degrees of accuracy gives eight

classes of failure detectors, each of which gets its own name. But since
we can boost weak completeness to strong completeness, we can use this as
an excuse to consider only the strongly-complete classes.
P (perfect) Strongly complete and strongly accurate: non-faulty processes
are never suspected; faulty processes are eventually suspected by everybody. Easily achieved in synchronous systems.
S (strong) Strongly complete and weakly accurate. The name is misleading if weve already forgotten about weak completeness, but the corresponding W (weak) class is only weakly complete and weakly accurate,
so its the strong completeness that the S is referring to.
P (eventually perfect) Strongly complete and eventually strongly accurate.
S (eventually strong) Strongly complete and eventually weakly accurate.
Jumping to the punch line: P can simulate any of the others, S and
P can both simulate S but cant simulate P or each other, and S cant
simulate any of the others (See Figure 11.1well prove all of this later.)
Thus S is the weakest class of failure detectors in this list. However, S is
strong enough to solve consensus, and in fact any failure detector (whatever

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

S
Figure 11.1: Partial order of failure detector classes. Higher classes can
simulate lower classes.
its properties) that can solve consensus is strong enough to simulate S
(this is the result in the Chandra-Hadzilacos-Toueg paper [CHT96])this
makes S the weakest failure detector for solving consensus as advertised.
Continuing our tour through Chandra and Toueg [CT96], well show the
simulation results and that S can solve consensus, but well skip the rather
involved proof of Ss special role from Chandra-Hadzilacos-Toueg.

11.3

Consensus with S

With the strong failure detector S, we can solve consensus for any number
of failures.
In this model, the failure detectors as applied to most processes are
completely useless. However, there is some non-faulty process c that nobody
every suspects, and this is enough to solve consensus with as many as n 1
failures.
The basic idea of the protocol: There are three phases. In the first phase,
the processes gossip about input values for n 1 asynchronous rounds. In
the second, they exchange all the values theyve seen and prune out any
that are not universally known. In the third, each process decides on the
lowest-id input that hasnt been pruned (minimum input also works since
at this point everybody has the same view of the inputs).
Pseudocode is given in Algorithm 11.2
In phase 1, each process p maintains two partial functions Vp and p ,
where Vp lists all the input values hq, vq i that p has ever seen and p lists
only those input values seen in the most recent of n1 asynchronous rounds.
Both Vp and p are initialized to {hp, vp i}. In round i, p sends (i, p ) to all
processes. It then collects hi, q i from each q that it doesnt suspect and sets
S
p to q q \ Vp (where q ranges over the processes from which p received a

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

1
2

3
4
5
6
7

8
9

Vp {hp, vp i}
p {hp, vp i}
// Phase 1
for i 1 to n 1 do
Send hi, p i to all processes.
Wait to receive hi, q i from all q I do not suspect.
p

q q

\ Vp

q q

// Phase 2
Send hn, p i to all processes.
Wait to receive hn, q i from all q I do not suspect.
T

q Vq Vp

// Phase 3
return some input from Vp chosen via a consistent rule.
Algorithm 11.2: Consensus with a strong failure detector

message in round i) and sets Vp to Vp p . In the next round, it repeats

the process. Note that each pair hq, vq i is only sent by a particular process
p the first round after p learns it: so any value that is still kicking around
in round n 1 had to go through n 1 processes.
In phase 2, each process p sends hn, Vp i, waits to receive hn, Vq i from
every process it does not suspect, and sets Vp to the intersection of Vp and
all received Vq . At the end of this phase all Vp values will in fact be equal,
as we will show.
In phase 3, everybody picks some input from their Vp vector according
to a consistent rule.

11.3.1

Proof of correctness

Let c be a non-faulty process that nobody every suspects.

The first observation is that the protocol satisfies validity, since every
Vp contains vc after round 1 and each Vp can only contain input values by
examination of the protocol. Whatever it may do to the other values, taking
intersections in phase 2 still leaves vc , so all processes pick some input value
from a nonempty list in phase 3.
To get termination we have to prove that nobody ever waits forever for
a message it wants; this basically comes down to showing that the first non-

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

faulty process that gets stuck eventually is informed by the S-detector that
the process it is waiting for is dead.
For agreement, we must show that in phase 3, every Vp is equal; in
particular, well show that every Vp = Vc . First it is necessary to show that
at the end of phase 1, Vc Vp for all p. This is done by considering two
cases:
1. If hq, vq i Vc and c learns hq, vq i before round n 1, then c sends
hq, vq i to p no later than round n 1, p waits for it (since nobody ever
suspects c), and adds it to Vp .
2. If hq, vq i Vc and c learns hq, vq i only in round n 1, then hq, vq i was
previously sent through n 1 other processes, i.e., all of them. Each
process p 6= c thus added hq, vq i to Vp before sending it and again
hq, vq i is in Vp .
(The missing case where hq, vq i isnt in Vc we dont care about.)
But now phase 2 knocks out any extra elements in Vp , since Vp gets set
to Vp Vc (some other Vq s that are supersets of Vc ). It follows that, at
the end of phase 2, Vp = Vc for all p. Finally, in phase 3, everybody applies
the same selection rule to these identical sets and we get agreement.

11.4

Consensus with S and f < n/2

The consensus protocol for S depends on some process c never being suspected; if c is suspected during the entire (finite) execution of the protocol
as can happen with Sthen it is possible that no process will wait to hear
from c (or anybody else) and the processes will all decide their own inputs.
So to solve consensus with S we will need to assume fewer than n/2 failures, allowing any process to wait to hear from a majority no matter what
lies its failure detector is telling it.
The resulting protocol, known as the Chandra-Toueg consensus protocol, is structurally similar to the consensus protocol in Paxos.1 The difference is that instead of proposers blindly showing up, the protocol is divided
into rounds with a rotating coordinator pi in each round r with r = i
(mod n). The termination proof is based on showing that in any round
where the coordinator is not faulty and nobody suspects it, the protocol
finishes.
1

See Chapter 10.

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

The consensus protocol uses as a subroutine a protocol for reliable

broadcast, which guarantees that any message that is sent is either received by no non-faulty processes or exactly once by all non-faulty processes.
Pseudocode for reliable broadcast is given as Algorithm 11.3. Its easy to
see that if a process p is non-faulty and receives m, then the fact that p is
non-faulty means that is successfully sends m to everybody else, and that
the other non-faulty processes also receive the message at least once and
deliver it.
1
2
3
4
5
6

procedure broadcast(m)
send m to all processes.
upon receiving m do
if I havent seen m before then
send m to all processes
deliver m to myself
Algorithm 11.3: Reliable broadcast
Heres a sketch of the actual consensus protocol:
Each process keeps track of a preference (initially its own input) and a
timestamp, the round number in which it last updated its preference.
The processes go through a sequence of asynchronous rounds, each
divided into four phases:
1. All processes send (round, preference, timestamp) to the coordinator for the round.
2. The coordinator waits to hear from a majority of the processes
(possibly including itself). The coordinator sets its own preference to some preference with the largest timestamp of those it
receives and sends (round, preference) to all processes.
3. Each process waits for the new proposal from the coordinator
or for the failure detector to suspect the coordinator. If it receives a new preference, it adopts it as its own, sets timestamp
to the current round, and sends (round, ack) to the coordinator.
Otherwise, it sends (round, nack) to the coordinator.
4. The coordinator waits to receive ack or nack from a majority of
processes. If it receives ack from a majority, it announces the

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

current preference as the protocol decision value using reliable

broadcast.
Any process that receives a value in a reliable broadcast decides on it
immediately.
Pseudocode is in Algorithm 19.
1
2
3
4
5
6

7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

18
19

preference input
timestamp 0
for round 1 . . . do
Send hround, preference, timestampi to coordinator
if I am the coordinator then
Wait to receive hround, preference, timestampi from majority of
processes.
Set preference to value with largest timestamp.
Send hround, preferencei to all processes.
Wait to receive round, preference0 from coordinator or to suspect
coordinator.

if I received round, preference0 then
preference preference0
timestamp round
Send ack(round) to coordinator.
else
Send nack(round) to coordinator.

if I am the coordinator then

Wait to receive ack(round) or nack(round) from a majority of
processes.
if I received no nack(round) messages then
Broadcast preference using reliable broadcast.

11.4.1

Proof of correctness

For validity, observe that the decision value is an estimate and all estimates
start out as inputs.
For termination, observe that no process gets stuck in phase 1, 2, or 4,
because either it isnt waiting or it is waiting for a majority of non-faulty
processes who all sent messages unless they have already decided (this is

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

why we need the nacks in phase 3). The loophole here is that processes
that decide stop participating in the protocol; but because any non-faulty
process retransmits the decision value in the reliable broadcast, if a process
is waiting for a response from a non-faulty process that already terminated,
eventually it will get the reliable broadcast instead and terminate itself.
In phase 3, a process might get stuck waiting for a dead coordinator, but
the strong completeness of S means that it suspects the dead coordinator
eventually and escapes. So at worst we do finitely many rounds.
Now suppose that after some time t there is a process c that is never
suspected by any process. Then in the next round in which c is the coordinator, in phase 3 all surviving processes wait for c and respond with
ack, c decides on the current estimate, and triggers the reliable broadcast
protocol to ensure everybody else decides on the same value. Since reliable broadcast guarantees that everybody receives the message, everybody
decides this value or some value previously broadcastbut in either case
everybody decides.
Agreement is the tricky part. Its possible that two coordinators both
initiate a reliable broadcast and some processes choose the value from the
first and some the value from the second. But in this case the first coordinator collected acks from a majority of processes in some round r, and all
subsequent coordinators collected estimates from an overlapping majority
of processes in some round r0 > r. By applying the same induction argument as for Paxos, we get that all subsequent coordinators choose the same
estimate as the first coordinator, and so we get agreement.

11.5

f < n/2 is still required even with P

We can show that with a majority of failures, were in trouble with just P
(and thus with S, which is trivially simulated by P ). The reason is that
P can lie to us for some long initial interval of the protocol, and consensus
is required to terminate eventually despite these lies. So the usual partition
argument works: start half of the processes with input 0, half with 1, and
run both halves independently with P suspecting the other half until the
processes in both halves decide on their common inputs. We can now make
P happy by letting it stop suspecting the processes, but its too late.

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

11.6

Relationships among the classes

Its easy to see that P simulates S and P simulates S without modification. Its also immediate that P simulates P and S simulates S (make
eventually be now), which gives a diamond-shaped lattice structure between the classes. What is trickier is to show that this structure doesnt
collapse: P cant simulate S, S cant simulate P , and S cant simulate
any of the other classes.
First lets observe that P cant simulate S: if it could, we would get a
consensus protocol for f n/2 failures, which we cant do. It follows that
P also cant simulate P (because P can simulate S).
To show that S cant simulate P , choose some non-faulty victim process
v and consider an execution in which S periodically suspects v (which it is
allowed to do as long as there is some other non-faulty process it never
suspects). If the P -simulator ever responds to this by refusing to suspect
v, there is an execution in which v really is dead, and the simulator violates
strong completeness. But if not, we violate eventual strong accuracy. Note
that this also implies S cant simulate P , since P can simulate P . It also
shows that S cant simulate either of P or P .
We are left with showing S cant simulate S. Consider a system where
ps S detector suspects q but not r from the start of the execution, and
similarly rs S detector also suspects q but not p. Run p and r in isolation
until they give up and decide that q is in fact dead (which they must do
eventually by strong completeness, since this run is indistinguishable from
one in which q is faulty). Then wake up q and crash p and r. Since q is the
only non-faulty process, weve violated weak accuracy.
Chandra and Toueg [CT96] give as an example of a natural problem
that can be solved only with P the problem of terminating reliable
broadcast, in which a single leader process attempts to send a message
and all other processes eventually agree on the message if the leader is nonfaulty but must terminate after finite time with a default no message return
value if the leader is faulty.2 The process is solvable using P by just having
each process either wait for the message or for P to suspect the leader, which
can only occur if the leader does in fact crash. If the leader is dead, the
processes must eventually decide on no message; this separates P from S
and P since we can then wake up the leader and let it send its message.
But it also separates P from S, since we can have the S-detector only be
2

This is a slight weakening of the problem, which however still separates P from the
other classes. For the real problem see Chandra and Toueg [CT96].

CHAPTER 11. FAILURE DETECTORS

accurate for non-leaders. For other similar problems see the paper.

Chapter 12

Logical clocks
Logical clocks assign a timestamp to all events in an asynchronous messagepassing system that simulates real time, thereby allowing timing-based algorithms to run despite asynchrony. In general, they dont have anything to
do with clock synchronization or wall-clock time; instead, they provide numerical values that increase over time and are consistent with the observable
behavior of the system. In particular, messages are never delivered before
they are sent, when time is measured using the logical clock.

12.1

Causal ordering

The underlying notion of a logical clock is causal ordering, a partial order

on events that describes when one event e provably occurs before some other
event e0 .
For the purpose of defining casual ordering and logical clocks, we will
assume that a schedule consists of send events and receive events, which
correspond to some process sending a single message or receiving a single
message, respectively.
Given two schedules S and S 0 , call S and S 0 similar if S|p = S 0 |p for all
processes p; in other words, S and S 0 are similar if they are indistinguishable
by all participants. We can define a causal ordering on the events of some
schedule S implicitly by considering all schedules S 0 similar to S, and declare
that e < e0 if e precedes e0 in all such S. But it is usually more useful to
make this ordering explicit.
Following [AW04, 6.1.1] (and ultimately [Lam78]), define the happensbefore relation S on a schedule S to consist of:
1. All pairs (e, e0 ) where e precedes e0 in S and e and e0 are events of the
85

CHAPTER 12. LOGICAL CLOCKS

same process.
2. All pairs (e, e0 ) where e is a send event and e0 is the receive event for
the same message.
3. All pairs (e, e0 ) where there exists a third event e00 such that e S e00
and e00 S e0 . (In other words, we take the transitive closure of the
relation defined by the previous two cases.)
It is not terribly hard to show that this gives a partial order; the main
observation is that if e S e0 , then e precedes e0 in S. So S is a subset of
the total order <S given by the order of events in S.
A causal shuffle S 0 of a schedule S is a permutation of S that is consistent with the happens-before relation on S; that is, if e happens-before e0 in
S, then e precedes e0 in S 0 . The importance of the happens-before relation
follows from this lemma:
Lemma 12.1.1. Let S 0 be a permutation of the events in S. Then the
following two statements are equivalent:
1. S 0 is a causal shuffle of S.
2. S 0 is the schedule of an execution fragment of a message-passing system
with S|p = S 0 |p for all S 0 .
Proof. (1 2). We need to show both similarity and that S 0 corresponds
to some execution fragment. Well show similarity first. Pick some p; then
every event at p in S also occurs in S 0 , and they must occur in the same order
by the first case of the definition of the happens-before relation. This gets
us halfway to showing S 0 is the schedule of some execution fragment, since
it says that any events initiated by p are consistent with ps programming.
To get the rest of the way, observe that any other events are receive events.
For each receive event e0 in S, there must be some matching send event e
also in S; thus e and e0 are both in S 0 and occur in the right order by the
second case of the definition of happens-before.
(2 1). First observe that since every event e in S 0 occurs at some
process p, if S 0 |p = S|p for all p, then there is a one-to-one correspondence
between events in S 0 and S, and thus S 0 is a permutation of S. Now we
need to show that S 0 is consistent with S . Let e S e0 . There are three
cases.
1. e and e0 are events of the same process p and e <S e0 . But then e <S 0 e0
because S|p = S 0 |p.

CHAPTER 12. LOGICAL CLOCKS

2. e is a send event and e0 is the corresponding receive event. Then

e <S 0 e0 because S 0 is the schedule of an execution fragment.
3. e S e0 by transitivity. Then each step in the chain connecting e to
e0 uses one of the previous cases, and e <S 0 e0 by transitivity of <S 0 .

What this means: if I tell you S , then you know everything there is
to know about the order of events in S that you can deduce from reports
from each process together with the fact that messages dont travel back in
time. But S is a pretty big relation ((|S|2 ) bits with a naive encoding),
and seems to require global knowledge of <S to compute. So we can ask if
there is some simpler, easily computable description that works almost as
well. This is where logical clocks come in.

12.2

Implementations

12.2.1

Lamport clock

Lamports logical clock [Lam78] runs on top of any other message-passing

protocol, adding additional state at each process and additional content to
the messages (which is invisible to the underlying protocol). Every process
maintains a local variable clock. When a process sends a message or executes
an internal step, it sets clock clock + 1 and assigns the resulting value
as the clock value of the event. If it sends a message, it piggybacks the
resulting clock value on the message. When a process receives a message
with timestamp t, it sets clock max(clock, t) + 1; the resulting clock value
is taken as the time of receipt of the message. (To make life easier, we
assume messages are received one at a time.)
Theorem 12.2.1. If we order all events by clock value, we get an execution
of the underlying protocol that is locally indistinguishable from the original
execution.
Proof. Let e <L e0 if e has a lower clock value than e0 . If e and e0 are two
events of the same process, then e <L e0 . If e and e0 are send and receive
events of the same message, then again e <L e0 . So for any events e, e0 , if
e S e0 , then e <L e0 . Now apply Lemma 12.1.1.

CHAPTER 12. LOGICAL CLOCKS

12.2.2

Neiger-Toueg-Welch clock

Lamports clock has the advantage of requiring no changes in the behavior

of the underlying protocol, but has the disadvantage that clocks are entirely
under the control of the logical-clock protocol and may as a result make
huge jumps when a message is received. If this is unacceptableperhaps
the protocol needs to do some unskippable maintenance task every 1000
clock ticksthen an alternative approach due to Neiger and Toueg [NT87]
and Welch [Wel87] can be used.
Method: Each process maintains its own variable clock, which it increments whenever it feels like it. To break ties, the process extends the clock
value to hclock, id, eventCounti where eventCount is a count of send and receive events (and possibly local computation steps). As in Lamports clock,
each message in the underlying protocol is timestamped with the current
extended clock value. Because the protocol cant change the clock values on
its own, when a message is received with a timestamp later than the current
extended clock value, its delivery is delayed until clock exceeds the message
timestamp, at which point the receive event is assigned the extended clock
value of the time of delivery.
Theorem 12.2.2. If we order all events by clock value, we get an execution
of the underlying protocol that is locally indistinguishable from the original
execution.
Proof. Again, we have that (a) all events at the same process occur in increasing order (since the event count rises even if the clock value doesnt,
and we assume that the clock value doesnt drop) and (b) all receive events
occur later than the corresponding send event (since we force them to). So
Lemma 12.1.1 applies.
The advantage of the Neiger-Toueg-Welch clock is that it doesnt impose any assumptions on the clock values, so it is possible to make clock be
a real-time clock at each process and nonetheless have a causally-consistent
ordering of timestamps even if the local clocks are not perfectly synchronized. If some processs clock is too far off, it will have trouble getting its
messages delivered quickly (if its clock is ahead) or receiving messages (if its
clock is behind)the net effect is to add a round-trip delay to that process
equal to the difference between its clock and the clock of its correspondent. But the protocol works well when the processes clocks are closely
synchronized, which has become a plausible assumption in the last 10-15

CHAPTER 12. LOGICAL CLOCKS

years thanks to the Network Time Protocol, cheap GPS receivers, and clock
synchronization mechanisms built into most cellular phone networks.1

12.2.3

Vector clocks

Logical clocks give a superset of the happens-before relation: if e S e0 ,

then e <L e0 (or conversely, if e 6<L e0 , then it is not the case that e S e0 ).
This is good enough for most applications, but what if we want to compute
S exactly?
Here we can use a vector clock, invented independently by Fidge [Fid91]
and Mattern [Mat93]. Instead of a single clock value, each event is stamped
with a vector of values, one for each process. When a process executes a
local event or a send event, it increments only its own component xp of the
vector. When it receives a message, it increments xp and sets each xq to the
max of its previous value and the value of xq piggybacked on the message.
We define VC(e) VC(e0 ), where VC(e) is the value of the vector clock for
e, if VC(e)i VC(e0 )i for all i.
Theorem 12.2.3. Fix a schedule S; then for any e, e0 , V C(e) < V C(e0 ) if
and only if e S e0 .
Proof. The if part follows immediately from the update rules for the vector
clock. For the only if part, suppose e does not happen-before e0 . Then e and
e0 are events of distinct processes p and p0 . For VC(e) < VC(e0 ) to hold, we
must have VC(e)p < VC(e0 )p ; but this can occur only if the value of VC(e)p
is propagated to p0 by some sequence of messages starting at p and ending
at p0 at or before e0 occurs. In this case we have e S e0 .

12.3

Applications

12.3.1

Consistent snapshots

A consistent snapshot of a message-passing computation is a description

of the states of the processes (and possibly messages in transit, but we
can reduce this down to just states by keeping logs of messages sent and
received) that gives the global configuration at some instant of a schedule
that is a consistent reordering of the real schedule (a consistent cut in
1

As I write this, my computer reports that its clock is an estimated 289 microseconds
off from the timeserver it is synchronized to, which is less than a tenth of the round-trip
delay to machines on the same local-area network and a tiny fraction of the round-trip
delay to machines elsewhere, including the timeserver machine.

CHAPTER 12. LOGICAL CLOCKS

the terminology of [AW04, 6.1.2]. Without shutting down the protocol

before taking a snapshot this is the about the best we can hope for in a
message-passing system.
Logical time can be used to obtain consistent snapshots: pick some logical time and have each process record its state at this time (i.e. immediately
after its last step before the time or immediately before its first step after
the time). We have already argued that logical time gives a consistent reordering of the original schedule, so the set of values recorded is just the
configuration at the end of an appropriate prefix of this reordering. In other
words, its a consistent snapshot.
If we arent building logical clocks anyway, there is a simpler consistent
snapshot algorithm due to Chandy and Lamport [CL85]. Here some central
initiator broadcasts a snap message, and each process records its state and
immediately forwards the snap message to all neighbors when it first receives
a snap message. To show that the resulting configuration is a configuration
of some consistent reordering, observe that (with FIFO channels) no process
receives a message before receiving snap that was sent after the sender sent
snap: thus causality is not violated by lining up all the pre-snap operations
before all the post-snap ones.
The full Chandy-Lamport algorithm adds a second marker message that
is used to sweep messages in transit out of the communications channels,
which avoids the need to keep logs if we want to reconstruct what messages
are in transit (this can also be done with the logical clock version). The
idea is that when a process records its state after receiving the snap message, it issues a marker message on each outgoing channel. For incoming
channels, the process all records all messages received between the snapshot
and receiving a marker message on that channel (or nothing if it receives
marker before receiving snap). A process only reports its value when it has
received a marker on each channel. The marker and snap messages can also
be combined if the broadcast algorithm for snap resends it on all channels
anyway, and a further optimization is often to piggyback both on messages
of the underlying protocol if the underlying protocol is chatty enough.
Note that Chandy-Lamport is equivalent to the logical-time snapshot
using Lamport clocks, if the snap message is treated as a message with a
very large timestamp. For Neiger-Toueg-Welch clocks, we get an algorithm
where processes spontaneously decide to take snapshots (since Neiger-TouegWelch clocks arent under the control of the snapshot algorithm) and delay
post-snapshot messages until the local snapshot has been taken. This can
be implemented as in Chandy-Lamport by separating pre-snapshot messages
from post-snapshot messages with a marker message, and essentially turns

CHAPTER 12. LOGICAL CLOCKS

into Chandy-Lamport if we insist that a process advance its clock to the

snapshot time when it receives a marker.
12.3.1.1

Property testing

Consistent snapshots are in principle useful for debugging (since one can
gather a consistent state of the system without being able to talk to every
process simultaneously), and in practice are mostly used for detecting stable
properties of the system. Here a stable property is some predicate on
global configurations that remains true in any successor to a configuration
in which it is true, or (bending the notion of properties a bit) functions
on configurations whose values dont change as the protocol runs. Typical
examples are quiescence and its evil twin, deadlock. More exotic examples
include total money supply in a banking system that cannot create or destroy
money, or the fact that every process has cast an irrevocable vote in favor
of some proposal or advanced its Neiger-Toueg-Welch-style clock past some
threshold.
The reason we can test such properties using consistent snapshot is that
when the snapshot terminates with value C in some configuration C 0 , even
though C may never have occurred during the actual execution of the protocol, there is an execution which leads from C to C 0 . So if P holds in C,
stability means that it holds in C 0 .
Naturally, if P doesnt hold in C, we cant say much. So in this case we
re-run the snapshot protocol and hope we win next time. If P eventually
holds, we will eventually start the snapshot protocol after it holds and obtain
a configuration (which again may not correspond to any global configuration
that actually occurs) in which P holds.

12.3.2

Replicated state machines

The main application for suggested by Lamport in his logical-clocks paper [Lam78] was building a replicated state machine. In his construction,
any process can at any time issue an operation on the object by broadcasting it with an attached timestamp. When a process receives an operation,
it buffers it in a priority queue ordered by increasing timestamp. It can apply the first operation in the queue only when it can detect that no earlier
operation will arrive, which it can do if it sees a message from every other
process with a later timestamp (or after a timeout, if we have some sort of
clock synchronization guarantee). It is not terribly hard to show that this
guarantees that every replica gets the same sequence of operations applied

CHAPTER 12. LOGICAL CLOCKS

to it, and that these operations are applied in an order consistent with the
processes ability to determine the actual order in which they were proposed.
Furthermore, if the processes spam each other regularly with their current
clock values, each operation will take effect after at most two message delays
(with Lamport clocks) if the clocks are not very well synchronized and after approximately one message delay (with Lamport or Neiger-Toueg-Welch
clocks) if they are. A process can also execute read operations on its own
copy immediately without notifying other processes (if it is willing to give
up linearizability for sequential consistency).
However, this particular construction assumes no failures, so for poorlysynchronized clocks or systems in which sequentially-consistent reads are not
good enough, replicated state machines are no better than simply keeping
one copy of the object on a single process and having all operations go
through that process: 2 message delays + 2 messages per operation for the
single copy beats 2 message delays + many messages for full replication. But
replicated state machines take less time under good conditions, and when
augmented with more powerful tools like consensus or atomic broadcast are
the basis of most fault-tolerant implementations of general shared-memory
objects.

Chapter 13

Synchronizers
Synchronizers simulate an execution of a failure-free synchronous system
in a failure-free asynchronous system. See [AW04, Chapter 11] or [Lyn96,
Chapter 16] for a detailed (and rigorous) presentation.

13.1

Definitions

Formally, a synchronizer sits between the underlying network and the processes and does one of two things:
A global synchronizer guarantees that no process receives a message
for round r until all processes have sent their messages for round r.
A local synchronizer guarantees that no process receives a message
for round r until all of that processs neighbors have sent their messages
for round r.
In both cases the synchronizer packages all the incoming round r messages m for a single process together and delivers them as a single action
recv(p, m, r). Similarly, a process is required to hand over all of its outgoing
round-r messages to the synchronizer as a single action send(p, m, r)this
prevents a process from changing its mind and sending an extra round-r
message or two. It is easy to see that the global synchronizer produces executions that are effectively indistinguishable from synchronous executions,
assuming that a synchronous execution is allowed to have some variability
in exactly when within a given round each process does its thing. The local
synchronizer only guarantees an execution that is locally indistinguishable
from an execution of the global synchronizer: an individual process cant
93

CHAPTER 13. SYNCHRONIZERS

tell the difference, but comparing actions at different (especially widely separated) processes may reveal some process finishing round r + 1 while others
are still stuck in round r or earlier. Whether this is good enough depends
on what you want: its bad for coordinating simultaneous missile launches,
but may be just fine for adapting a synchronous message-passing algorithm
(e.g. for distributed breadth-first search as described in Chapter 5) to an
asynchronous system, if we only care about the final states of the processes
and not when precisely those states are reached.
Formally, the relation between global and local synchronization is described by the following lemma:
Lemma 13.1.1. For any schedule S of a locally synchronous execution,
there is a schedule S 0 of a globally synchronous execution such that S|p =
S 0 |p for all processes p.
Proof. Essentially, we use the same happens-before relation as in Chapter 12, and the fact that if a schedule S 0 is a causal shuffle of another schedule
S (i.e., a permutation of T that preserves causality), then S 0 |p = S|p for all
p (Lemma 12.1.1).
Given a schedule S, consider a schedule S 0 in which the events are ordered
first by increasing round and then by putting all sends before receives. This
ordering is consistent with S , so its a causal shuffle of S and S 0 |p = S|p.
But its globally synchronized, because no round-r operations at all happen
before a round-(r 1) operation.

13.2

Implementations

These all implement at least a local synchronizer (the beta synchronizer is

global). The names were chosen by their inventor, Baruch Awerbuch [Awe85].
The main difference between them is the mechanism used to determine
when round-r messages have been delivered.
In the alpha synchronizer, every node sends a message to every neighbor in every round (possibly a dummy message if the underlying protocol
doesnt send a message); this allows the receiver to detect when its gotten
all its round-r messages (because it expects to get a message from every
neighbor) but may produce huge blow-ups in message complexity in a dense
graph.
In the beta synchronizer, messages are acknowledged by their receivers
(doubling the message complexity), so the senders can detect when all of
their messages are delivered. But now we need a centralized mechanism to

CHAPTER 13. SYNCHRONIZERS

collect this information from the senders and distribute it to the receivers,
since any particular receiver doesnt know which potential senders to wait
for. This blows up time complexity, as we essentially end up building a
global synchronizer with a central leader.
The gamma synchronizer combines the two approaches at different levels to obtain a trade-off between messages and time that depends on the
structure of the graph and how the protocol is organized.
Details of each synchronizer are given below.

13.2.1

The alpha synchronizer

The alpha synchronizer uses local information to construct a local synchronizer. In round r, the synchronizer at p sends ps message (tagged with the
round number) to each neighbor p0 or noMsg(r) if it has no messages. When
it collects a message or noMsg from each neighbor for round r, it delivers
all the messages. Its easy to see that this satisfies the local synchronization
specification.
This produces no change in time but may drastically increase message
complexity because of all the extra noMsg messages flying around. For a
synchronous protocol that runs in T rounds with M messages, the same
protocol running with the alpha synchronizer will run in T time units, but
the message complexity may go up to M + T |E| messages.

13.2.2

The beta synchronizer

The beta synchronizer centralizes detection of message delivery using a

rooted directed spanning tree (previously constructed). When p0 receives
a round-r message from p, it responds with ack(r). When p collects an ack
for all the messages it sent plus an OK from all of its children, it sends OK to
its parent. When the root has all the ack and OK messages it is expecting, it
broadcasts go. Receiving go makes p deliver the queued round-r messages.
This works because in order for the root to issue go, every round-r message has to have gotten an acknowledgment, which means that all round-r
messages are waiting in the receivers buffers to be delivered. For the beta
synchronizer, message complexity increases slightly from M to 2M +2(n1),
but time complexity goes up by a factor proportional to the depth of the
tree.

CHAPTER 13. SYNCHRONIZERS

13.2.3

The gamma synchronizer

The gamma synchronizer combines the alpha and beta synchronizers to try
to get low blowups on both time complexity and message complexity. The
essential idea is to cover the graph with a spanning forest and run beta
within each tree and alpha between trees. Specifically:
Every message in the underlying protocol gets acked (including messages that pass between trees).
When a process has collected all of its outstanding round-r acks, it
sends OK up its tree.
When the root of a tree gets all acks and OK, it sends ready to the
roots of all adjacent trees (and itself). Two trees are adjacent if any
of their members are adjacent.
When the root collects ready from itself and all adjacent roots, it broadcasts go through its own tree.
As in the alpha synchronizer, we can show that no root issues go unless it
and all its neighbors issue ready, which happens only after both all nodes in
the roots tree and all their neighbors (some of whom might be in adjacent
trees) have received acks for all messages. This means that when a node
receives go it can safely deliver its bucket of messages.
Message complexity is comparable to the beta synchronizer assuming
there arent too many adjacent trees: 2M messages for sends and acks,
plus O(n) messages for in-tree communication, plus O(Eroots ) messages for
root-to-root communication. Time complexity per synchronous round is
proportional to the depth of the trees: this includes both the time for intree communication, and the time for root-to-root communication, which
might need to be routed through leaves.
In a particularly nice graph, the gamma synchronizer can give costs
comparable to the costs of the original synchronous algorithm. An example
in [Lyn96] is a ring of k-cliques, where we build a tree in each clique and get
O(1) time blowup and O(n) added messages. This is compared to O(n/k)
time blowup for beta and O(k) message blowup (or worse) for alpha. Other
graphs may favor tuning the size of the trees in the forest toward the alpha
or beta ends of the spectrum, e.g., if the whole graph is a clique (and we
didnt worry about contention issues), we might as well just use beta and
get O(1) time blowup and O(n) added messages.

CHAPTER 13. SYNCHRONIZERS

13.3

Applications

See [AW04, 11.3.2] or [Lyn96, 16.5]. The one we have seen is distributed
breadth-first search, where the two asynchronous algorithms we described
in Chapter 5 were essentially the synchronous algorithms with the beta and
alpha synchronizers embedded in them. But what synchronizers give us
in general is the ability to forget about problems resulting from asynchrony
provided we can assume no failures (which may be a very strong assumption)
and are willing to accept a bit of overhead.

13.4

Limitations of synchronizers

Here we show some lower bounds on synchronizers, justifying our previous

claim that failures are trouble and showing that global synchronizers are
necessarily slow in a high-diameter network.

13.4.1

Impossibility with crash failures

The synchronizers above all fail badly if some process crashes. In the
synchronizer, the system slowly shuts down as a wave of waiting propagates
out from the dead process. In the synchronizer, the root never gives the
green light for the next round. The synchronizer, true to its hybrid nature,
fails in a way that is a hybrid of these two disasters.
This is unavoidable in the basic asynchronous model. Suppose that we
had a synchronizer that could tolerate crash failures (here, the process that
crashed in the asynchronous model would also appear to crash in the simulated synchronous model, but everybody else would keep going). Then we
could use this fault-tolerant synchronizer to turn either of the synchronous
agreement protocols from Chapter 7 into an asynchronous protocol tolerating arbitrarily many crash failures. But this contradicts the FLP impossibility result from Chapter 9.
Well see more examples of this trick of showing that a particular simulation is impossible because it would allow us to violate impossibility results
later, especially when we start looking at the strength of shared-memory
objects in Chapter 18.

13.4.2

Unavoidable slowdown with global synchronization

The session problem gives a lower bound on the speed of a global synchronizer, or more generally on any protocol that tries to approximate synchrony

CHAPTER 13. SYNCHRONIZERS

in a certain sense. Recall that in a global synchronizer, our goal is to produce a simulation that looks synchronous from the outside; that is, that
looks synchronous to an observer that can see the entire schedule. In contrast, a local synchronizer produces a simulation that looks synchronous
from the insidethe resulting execution is indistinguishable from a synchronous execution to any of the processes, but an outside observer can
see that different processes execute different rounds at different times. The
global synchronizer weve seen takes more time than a local synchronizer;
the session problem shows that this is necessary.
In our description, we will mostly follow [AW04, 6.2.2].
A solution to the session problem is an asynchronous protocol in which
each process repeatedly executes some special action. Our goal is to guarantee that these special actions group into s sessions, where a session is an
interval of time in which every process executes at least one special action.
We also want the protocol to terminate: this means that in every execution,
every process executes a finite number of special actions.
A synchronous system can solve this problem trivially in s rounds: each
process executes one special action per round. For an asynchronous system,
a lower bound of Attiya and Mavronicolas [AM94] (based on an earlier
bound of Arjomandi, Fischer, and Lynch [AFL83], who defined the problem
in a slightly different communication model), shows that if the diameter of
the network is D, there is no solution to the s-session problem that takes
(s 1)D time or less in the worst case. The argument is based on reordering
events in any such execution to produce fewer than s sessions, using the
happens-before relation from Chapter 12.

13.5

Outline of the proof

(See [AW04, 6.2.2] for the real proof.)

Fix some algorithm A for solving the s-session problem, and suppose
that its worst-case time complexity is (s 1)D or less. Consider some
synchronous execution of A (that is, one where the adversary scheduler
happens to arrange the schedule to be synchronous) that takes (s 1)D
rounds or less. Divide this execution into two segments: an initial segment
that includes all rounds with special actions, and a suffix that includes
any extra rounds where the algorithm is still floundering around. We will
mostly ignore , but we have to leave it in to allow for the possibility that
whatever is happening there is important for the algorithm to work (e.g. to
detect termination).

CHAPTER 13. SYNCHRONIZERS

We now want to perform a causal shuffle on that leaves it with only

s 1 sessions. The first step is to chop into at most s 1 segments
1 , 2 , . . . of at most D rounds each. Because the diameter of the network
is D, there exist processes p0 and p1 such that no chain of messages starting
at p0 within some segment reaches p1 before the end of the segment. It
follows that for any events e0 of p0 and e1 of p1 in the same segment i , it
is not the case that e0 e1 . So there exists a causal shuffle of i that
puts all events of p0 after all events of p1 . By a symmetrical argument, we
can similarly put all events of p1 after all events of p0 . In both cases the
resulting schedule is indistinguishable by all processes from the original.
So now we apply these shuffles to each of the segments i in alternating
order: p0 goes first in the even-numbered segments and p1 goes first in the
odd-numbered segments, yielding a sequence of shuffled segments i0 . This
has the effect of putting the p0 events together, as in this example with
(s 1) = 4:
|(p0 , p1 ) = 1 2 3 4 |(p0 , p1 )
= 10 20 30 40 |(p0 , p1 )
= (p1 p0 )(p0 p1 )(p1 p0 )(p0 p1 )
= p1 (p0 p0 )(p1 p1 )(p0 p0 )p1
(here each p0 , p1 stands in for a sequence of events of each process).
Now lets count sessions. We cant end a session until we reach a point
where both processes have taken at least one step since the end of the last
session. If we mark with a slash the earliest places where this can happen,
we get a picture like this:
p1 p0 /p0 p1 /p1 p0 /p0 p1 /p1 .
We have at most s 1 sessions! This concludes the proof.

Chapter 14

Quorum systems
14.1

Basics

In the past few chapters, weve seen many protocols that depend on the fact
that if I talk to more than n/2 processes and you talk to more than n/2 processes, the two groups overlap. This is a special case of a quorum system,
a family of subsets of the set of processes with the property that any two
subsets in the family overlap. By choosing an appropriate family, we may
be able to achieve lower load on each system member, higher availability,
defense against Byzantine faults, etc.
The exciting thing from a theoretical perspective is that these turn a
systems problem into a combinatorial problem: this means we can ask combinatorialists how to solve it.

14.2

Simple quorum systems

Majority and weighted majorities

Specialized read/write systems where write quorum is a column and
read quorum a row of some grid.
Dynamic quorum systems: get more than half of the most recent copy.
Crumbling walls [PW97b, PW97a]: optimal small-quorum system for
good choice of wall sizes.

100

CHAPTER 14. QUORUM SYSTEMS

14.3

101

Goals

Minimize quorum size.

Minimize load, defined as the minimum over all access strategies
(probability distributions on quorums) of the maximum over all servers
of probability it gets hit.
Maximize capacity, defined as the maximum number of quorum accesses per time unit in the limit if each quorum access ties up a quorum
member for 1 time unit (but we are allowed to stagger a quorum access
over multiple time units).
Maximize fault-tolerance: minimum number of server failures that
blocks all quorums. Note that for standard quorum systems this is
directly opposed to minimizing quorum size, since killing the smallest
quorum stops us dead.
Minimize failure probability = probability that every quorum contains at least one bad server, assuming each server fails with independent probability.
Naor and Wool [NW98] describe trade-offs between these goals (some of
these were previously known, see the paper for citations):
capacity = 1/load; this is obtained by selecting the quorums independently at random according to the load-minimizing distribution. In
particular this means we can forget about capacity and just concentrate on minimizing load.
load max(c/n, 1/c) where c is the minimum quorum size. The first
case is obvious: if every access hits c nodes, spreading them out as
evenly as possible still hits each node c/n of the time. The second is
trickier: Naor and Wool prove it using LP duality, but the argument
essentially says that if we have some quorum Q of size c, then since
every other quorum Q0 intersects Q in at least one place, we can show
that every Q0 adds at least 1 unit of load in total to the c members of
Q. So if we pick a random quorum Q0 , the average load added to all of
Q is at least 1, so the average load added to some particular element
of Q is at least 1/ |Q| = 1/c. Combining the two cases, we cant hope

to get load better than 1/ n, and to get this load we need quorums

of size at least n.

CHAPTER 14. QUORUM SYSTEMS

102

Figure 14.1: Figure 2 from [NW98]. Solid lines are G(3); dashed lines are
G (3).
failure probability is at least p when p > 1/2 (and optimal system is to
just pick a single leader in this case), failure probability can be made
exponentially small in size of smallest quorum when p < 1/2 (with
many quorums). These results are due to Peleg and Wool [PW95].

14.4

Paths system

This is an optimal-load system from Naor and Wool [NW98] with exponentially low failure probability, based on percolation theory.
The basic idea is to build a dd mesh-like graph where a quorum consists
of the union of a top-to-bottom path (TB path) and a left-to-right path (LR

path); this gives quorum size O( n) and load O(1/ n). Note that the TB
and LR paths are not necessarily direct: they may wander around for a
while in order to get where they are going, especially if there are a lot of

failures to avoid. But the smallest quorums will have size 2d + 1 = O( n).
The actual mesh is a little more complicated. Figure 14.1 reproduces
the picture of the d = 3 case from the Naor and Wool paper.
Each server corresponds to a pair of intersecting edges, one from the

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103

G(d) grid and one from the G (d) grid (the star indicates that G (d) is the
dual graph1 of G(d). A quorum consists of a set of servers that produce an
LR path in G(d) and a TB path in G (d). Quorums intersect, because any
LR path in G(d) must cross some TB path in G (d) at some server (in fact,
each pair of quorums intersects in at least two places). The total number of

elements n is (d + 1)2 and the minimum size of a quorum is 2d + 1 = ( n).

The symmetry of the mesh gives that there exists a LR path in the
mesh if and only if there does not exist a TB path in its complement, the
graph that has an edge only if the mesh doesnt. For a mesh with failure
probability p < 1/2, the complement is a mesh with failure probability
q = 1 p > 1/2. Using results in percolation theory, it can be shown that
for failure probability q > 1/2, the probability that there exists a left-toright path is exponentially small in d (formally, for each p there is a constant
(p) such that Pr[LR path] exp((p)d)). We then have
Pr[(live quorum)] = Pr[(TB path) (LR path)]
= Pr[(LR path in complement) (TB path in complement)]
Pr[(LR path in complement)] + Pr[(TB path in complement)]
2 exp((1 p)d)

= 2 exp(( n)).
So the failure probability of this system is exponentially small for any fixed
p < 1/2.
See the paper [NW98] for more details.

14.5

Byzantine quorum systems

Standard quorum systems are great when you only have crash failures, but
with Byzantine failures you have to worry about finding a quorum that
includes a Byzantine serve who lies about the data. For this purpose you
need something stronger. Following Malkhi and Reiter [MR98] and Malkhi et
al. [MRWW01], one can define:
A b-disseminating quorum system guarantees |Q1 Q2 | b +
1 for all quorums Q1 and Q2 . This guarantees that if I update a
1
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_graph; the basic idea is that the dual of a
graph G embedded in the plane has a vertex for each region of G, and an edge connecting
each pair of vertices corresponding to adjacent regions, where a region is a subset of the
plane that is bounded by edges of G.

CHAPTER 14. QUORUM SYSTEMS

104

quorum Q1 and you update a quorum Q2 , and there are at most b

Byzantine processes, then there is some non-Byzantine process in both
our quorums. Mostly useful if data is self-verifying, e.g. signed with
digital signatures that the Byzantine processes cant forge. Otherwise,
I cant tell which of the allegedly most recent data values is the right
one since the Byzantine processes lie.
A b-masking quorum system guarantees |Q1 Q2 | 2b + 1 for
all quorums Q1 and Q2 . (In other words, its the same as a 2bdisseminating quorum system.) This allows me to defeat the Byzantine
processes through voting: given 2b + 1 overlapping servers, if I want
the most recent value of the data I take the one with the most recent
timestamp that appears on at least b + 1 servers, which the Byzantine
guys cant fake.
An additional requirement in both cases is that for any set of servers B
with |B| b, there is some quorum Q such that Q B = . This prevents
the Byzantine processes from stopping the system by simply refusing to
participate.
Note: these definitions are based on the assumption that there is some
fixed bound on the number of Byzantine processes. Malkhi and Reiter [MR98]
give more complicated definitions for the case where one has an arbitrary
family {B} of potential Byzantine sets. The definitions above are actually
simplified versions from [MRWW01].
The simplest way to build a b-disseminating quorum system is to use
supermajorities of size at least (n + b + 1)/2; the overlap between any two
such supermajorities is at least (n + b + 1) n = b + 1. This gives a load of
1
substantially more
p than 2 . There are better constructions that knock the
load down to ( b/n); see [MRWW01].
For more on this topic in general, see the survey by by Merideth and
Reiter [MR10].

14.6

Probabilistic quorum systems

The problem with all standard (or strict) quorum systems is that we need
big quorums to get high fault tolerance, since the adversary can always stop
us by knocking out our smallest quorum. A probabilistic quorum system or more specifically an -intersecting quorum system [MRWW01]
improves the fault-tolerance by relaxing the requirements. For such a system we have not only a set system Q, but also a probability distribu-

CHAPTER 14. QUORUM SYSTEMS

105

tion w supplied by the quorum system designer, with the property that
Pr[Q1 Q2 = ] when Q1 and Q2 are chosen independently according
to their weights.

14.6.1

Example

Let a quorum be any set of size k n for some k and let all quorums be
chosen uniformly at random. Pick some quorum Q1 ; what is the probability
that a random Q2 does not intersect Q1 ? Imagine we choose the elements
of Q2 one at a time. The chance that the first element x1 of Q2 misses Q1

is exactly (n k n)/n = 1 k/ n, and conditioning on x1 through xi1

missing Q1 the probability that xi also misses it is (n k n i + 1)/(n

i + 1) (n k n)/n = 1 k/ n. So taking theproduct over all i gives

k n

Pr[all miss Q1 ] (1 k/ n)
exp(k n)k/ n) = exp(k 2 ). So by
setting k = (ln 1/), we can get our desired -intersecting system.

14.6.2

Performance

Failure probabilities, if naively defined, can be made arbitrarily small: add

low-probability singleton quorums that are hardly ever picked unless massive
failures occur. But the resulting system is still -intersecting.
One way to look at this is that it points out a flaw in the -intersecting
definition: -intersecting quorums may cease to be -intersecting conditioned
on a particular failure pattern (e.g. when all the non-singleton quorums are
knocked out by massive failures). But Malkhi et al. [MRWW01] address the
problem in a different way, by considering only survival of high quality
quorums, where a particular quorum Q is -high-quality if Pr[Q1 Q2 =

|Q1 = Q] and high quality if its -high-quality. Its not hard to show
that a random quorum is -high-quality with probability at least /, so
a high quality quorum is one that fails to intersect a random quorum with

probability at most and a high quality quorum is picked with probability

at least 1 .
We can also consider load; Malkhi et al. [MRWW01] show that essentially the same bounds on load for strict quorum systems also hold for
intersecting quorum systems: load(S) max((E(|Q|)/n, (1 )2 / E(|Q|)),
where E(|Q|) is the expected size of a quorum. The left-hand branch of the
max is just the average load applied to a uniformly-chosen server. For the
right-hand side, pick some high quality quorum Q0 with size less than or

equal to (1 ) E(|Q|) and consider the load applied to its most loaded
member by its nonempty intersection (which occurs with probability at least

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106

) with a random quorum.

14.7

Signed quorum systems

A further generalization of probabilistic quorum systems gives signed quorum systems [Yu06]. In these systems, a quorum consists of some set of
positive members (servers you reached) and negative members (servers you
tried to reach but couldnt). These allow O(1)-sized quorums while tolerating n O(1) failures, under certain natural probabilistic assumptions.
Because the quorums are small, the load on some servers may be very high:
so these are most useful for fault-tolerance rather than load-balancing. See
the paper for more details.

Part II

Shared memory

107

Chapter 15

Model
Basic shared-memory model. See also [AW04, 4.1].
The idea of shared memory is that instead of sending messages to each
other, processes communicate through a pool of shared objects. These
are typically registers supporting read and write operations, but fancier
objects corresponding to more sophisticated data structures or synchronization primitives may also be included in the model.
It is usually assumed that the shared objects do not experience faults.
This means that the shared memory can be used as a tool to prevent partitions and other problems that can arise in message passing if the number
of faults get too high. As a result, for large numbers of processor failures,
shared memory is a more powerful model than message passing, although
we will see in Chapter 16 that both models can simulate each other provided
a majority of processes are non-faulty.

15.1

Atomic registers

An atomic register supports read and write operations; we think of these

as happening instantaneously, and think of operations of different processes
as interleaved in some sequence. Each read operation on a particular register returns the value written by the last previous write operation. Write
operations return nothing.
A process is defined by giving, for each state, the operation that it would
like to do next, together with a transition function that specifies how the
state will be updated in response to the return value of that operation. A
configuration of the system consists of a vector of states for the processes
and a vector of value for the registers. A sequential execution consists of a
108

CHAPTER 15. MODEL

109

sequence of alternating configurations and operations C0 , 1 , C1 , 2 , C2 . . . ,

where in each triple Ci , i+1 , Ci+1 , the configuration Ci+1 is the result of
applying i+1 to configuration Ci . For read operations, this means that the
state of the reading process is updated according to its transition function.
For write operations, the state of the writing process is updated, and the
state of the written register is also updated.
Pseudocode for shared-memory protocols is usually written using standard pseudocode conventions, with the register operations appearing either
as explicit subroutine calls or implicitly as references to shared variables.
Sometimes this can lead to ambiguity; for example, in the code fragment
done leftDone rightDone,
it is clear that the operation write(done, ) happens after read(leftDone)
and read(rightDone), but it is not clear which of read(leftDone and read(rightDone)
happens first. When the order is important, well write the sequence out
explicitly:
1
2
3

leftIsDone read(leftDone)
rightIsDone read(rightDone)
write(done, leftIsDone rightIsDone)

Here leftIsDone and rightIsDone are internal variables of the process, so

using them does not require read or write operations to the shared memory.

15.2

Single-writer versus multi-writer registers

One variation that does come up even with atomic registers is what processes
are allowed to read or write a particular register. A typical assumption is
that registers are single-writer multi-readerthere is only one process
that can write to the register (which simplifies implementation since we dont
have to arbitrate which of two near-simultaneous writes gets in last and thus
leaves the long-term value), although its also common to assume multiwriter multi-reader registers, which if not otherwise available can be built
from single-writer multi-reader registers using atomic snapshot (see Chapter 19). Less common are single-reader single-writer registers, which act
much like message-passing channels except that the receiver has to make an
explicit effort to pick up its mail.

CHAPTER 15. MODEL

15.3

110

Fairness and crashes

From the perspective of a schedule, the fairness condition says that every
processes gets to perform an operation infinitely often, unless it enters either
a crashed or halting state where it invokes no further operations. (Note
that unlike in asynchronous message-passing, there is no way to wake up a
process once it stops doing operations, since the only way to detect that any
activity is happening is to read a register and notice it changed.) Because
the registers (at least in in multi-reader models) provide a permanent faultfree record of past history, shared-memory systems are much less vulnerable
to crash failures than message-passing systems (though FLP1 still applies);
so in extreme cases, we may assume as many as n 1 crash failures, which
makes the fairness condition very weak. The n 1 crash failures case is
called the wait-free casesince no process can wait for any other process
to do anythingand has been extensively studied in the literature.
For historical reasons, work on shared-memory systems has tended to assume crash failures rather than Byzantine failurespossibly because Byzantine failures are easier to prevent when you have several processes sitting in
the same machine than when they are spread across the network, or possibly
because in multi-writer situations a Byzantine process can do much more
damage. But the model by itself doesnt put any constraints on the kinds
of process failures that might occur.

15.4

Concurrent executions

Often, the operations on our shared objects will be implemented using lowerlevel operations. When this happens, it no longer makes sense to assume that
the high-level operations occur one at a timealthough an implementation
may try to give that impression to its users. To model to possibility of
concurrency between operations, we split an operation into an invocation
and response, corresponding roughly to a procedure call and its return.
The user is responsible for invoking the object; the objects implementation
(or the shared memory system, if the object is taken as a primitive) is
responsible for responding. Typically we will imagine that an operation is
invoked at the moment it becomes pending, but there may be executions
in which that does not occur. The time between the invocation and the
response for an operation is the interval of the operation.
A concurrent execution is a sequence of invocations and responses,
1

See Chapter 9.

CHAPTER 15. MODEL

111

where after any prefix of the execution, every response corresponds to some
preceding invocation, and there is at most one invocation for each process
always the lastthat does not have a corresponding response. How a concurrent execution may or may not relate to a sequential execution depends
on the consistency properties of the implementation, as described below.

15.5

Consistency properties

Different shared-memory systems may provide various consistency properties, which describe how views of an object by different processes mesh
with each other. The strongest consistency property generally used is linearizability [HW90], where an implementation of an object is linearizable
if, for any concurrent execution of the object, there is a sequential execution of the object with the same operations and return values, where the
(total) order of operations in the sequential execution is a linearization of
the (partial) order of operations in the concurrent execution.
Less formally, this means that if operation a finishes before operation
b starts in the concurrent execution, then a must come before b in the
sequential execution. An equivalent definition is that we can assign each
operation a linearization point somewhere between when its invocation
and response, and the sequential execution obtained by assuming that all
operations occur atomically at their linearization points is consistent with
the specification of the object. Using either definition, we are given a fair bit
of flexibility in how to order overlapping operations, which can sometimes
be exploited by clever implementations (or lower bounds).
A weaker condition is sequential consistency [Lam79]. This says that
for any concurrent execution of the object, there exists some sequential
execution that is indistinguishable to all processes; however, this sequential
execution might include operations that occur out of order from a global
perspective. For example, we could have an execution of an atomic register
where you write to it, then I read from it, but I get the initial value that
precedes your write. This is sequentially consistent but not linearizable.
Mostly we will ask any implementations we consider to be linearizable.
However, both linearizability and sequential consistency are much stronger
than the consistency conditions provided by real multiprocessors. For some
examples of weaker memory consistency rules, a good place to start might
be the dissertation of Jalal Y. Kawash [Kaw00].

CHAPTER 15. MODEL

15.6

112

Complexity measures

There are several complexity measures for shared-memory systems.

Time Assume that no process takes more than 1 time unit between operations (but some fast processes may take less). Assign the first operation
in the schedule time 1 and each subsequent operation the largest time
consistent with the bound. The time of the last operation is the time
complexity. This is also known as the big-step or round measure
because the time increases by 1 precisely when every non-faulty process has taken at least one step, and a minimum interval during which
this occurs counts as a big step or a round.
Total work The total work or total step complexity is just the length
of the schedule, i.e. the number of operations. This doesnt consider
how the work is divided among the processes, e.g. an O(n2 ) total work
protocol might dump all O(n2 ) operations on a single process and leave
the rest with almost nothing to do. There is usually not much of a
direct correspondence between total work and time. For example, any
algorithm that involves busy-waitingwhere a process repeatedly
reads a register until it changesmay have unbounded total work
(because the busy-waiter might spin very fast) even though it runs in
bounded time (because the register gets written to as soon as some
slower process gets around to it). However, it is trivially the case that
the time complexity is never greater than the total work.
Per-process work The per-process work, individual work, per-process
step complexity, or individual step complexity measures the
maximum number of operations performed by any single process. Optimizing for per-process work produces more equitably distributed
workloads (or reveals inequitably distributed workloads). Like total
work, per-process work gives an upper bound on time, since each time
unit includes at least one operation from the longest-running process,
but time complexity might be much less than per-process work (e.g.
in the busy-waiting case above).
Remote memory references As weve seen, step complexity doesnt make
much sense for processes that busy-wait. An alternative measure is
remote memory reference complexity or RMR complexity. This
measure charges one unit for write operations and the first read operation by each process following a write, but charges nothing for subsequent read operations if there are no intervening writes (see 17.5

CHAPTER 15. MODEL

113

for details). In this measure, a busy-waiting operation is only charged

one unit. RMR complexity can be justified to a certain extent by the
cost structure of multi-processor caching [MCS91, And90].
Contention In multi-writer or multi-reader situations, it may be bad to
have too many processes pounding on the same register at once. The
contention measures the maximum number of pending operations on
any single register during the schedule (this is the simplest of several
definitions out there). A single-reader single-writer algorithm always
has contention at most 2, but achieving such low contention may be
harder for multi-reader multi-writer algorithms. Of course, the contention is never worse that n, since we assume each process has at
most one pending operation at a time.
Space Just how big are those registers anyway? Much of the work in this
area assumes they are very big. But we can ask for the maximum
number of bits in any one register (width) or the total size (bit complexity) or number (space complexity) of all registers, and will try
to minimize these quantities when possible. We can also look at the
size of the internal states of the processes for another measure of space
complexity.

15.7

Fancier registers

In addition to stock read-write registers, one can also imagine more trickedout registers that provide additional operations. These usually go by the
name of read-modify-write (RMW) registers, since the additional operations consist of reading the state, applying some function to it, and writing
the state back, all as a single atomic action. Examples of RMW registers
that have appeared in real machines at various times in the past include:
Test-and-set bits A test-and-set operation sets the bit to 1 and returns
the old value.
Fetch-and-add registers A fetch-and-add operation adds some increment (typically -1 or 1) to the register and returns the old value.
Compare-and-swap registers A compare-and-swap operation writes
a new value only if the previous value is equal to a supplied test value.
These are all designed to solve various forms of mutual exclusion or
locking, where we want at most one process at a time to work on some
shared data structure.

CHAPTER 15. MODEL

114

Some more exotic read-modify-write registers that have appeared in the

literature are
Fetch-and-cons Here the contents of the register is a linked list; a fetchand-cons adds a new head and returns the old list.
Sticky bits (or sticky registers) With a sticky bit or sticky register [Plo89], once the initial empty value is overwritten, all further
writes fail. The writer is not notified that the write fails, but may
be able to detect this fact by reading the register in a subsequent
operation.
Bank accounts Replace the write operation with deposit, which adds a
non-negative amount to the state, and withdraw, which subtracts a
non-negative amount from the state provided the result would not go
below 0; otherwise, it has no effect.
These solve problems that are hard for ordinary read/write registers under bad conditions. Note that they all have to return something in response
to an invocation.
There are also blocking objects like locks or semaphores, but these dont
fit into the RMW framework.
We can also consider generic read-modify-write registers that can compute arbitrary functions (passed as an argument to the read-modify-write
operation) in the modify step. Here we typically assume that the readmodify-write operation returns the old value of the register. Generic readmodify-write registers are not commonly found in hardware but can be easily
simulated (in the absence of failures) using mutual exclusion.2

See Chapter 17.

Chapter 16

Distributed shared memory

In distributed shared memory, our goal is to simulate a collection of
memory locations or registers, each of which supports a read operation
that returns the current state of the register and a write operation that
updates the state. Our implementation should be linearizable [HW90],
meaning that read and write operations appear to occur instantaneously
(atomically) at some point in between when the operation starts and the
operation finishes; equivalently, there should be some way to order all the
operations on the registers to obtain a sequential execution consistent
with the behavior of a real register (each read returns the value of the most
recent write) while preserving the observable partial order on operations
(where 1 precedes 2 if 1 finishes before 2 starts). Implicit in this definition is the assumption that implemented operations take place over some
interval, between an invocation that starts the operation and a response
that ends the operation and returns its value.1
In the absence of process failures, we can just assign each register to some
process, and implement both read and write operations by remote procedure
calls to the process (in fact, this works for arbitrary shared-memory objects). With process failures, we need to make enough copies of the register
that failures cant destroy all of them. This creates an asymmetry between
simulations of message-passing from shared-memory and vice versa; in the
former case (discussed briefly in 16.1 below), a process that fails in the
underlying shared-memory system only means that the same process fails in
the simulated message-passing system. But in the other direction, not only
does the failure of a process in the underlying message-passing system mean
that the same process fails in the simulated shared-memory system, but the
1

More details on the shared-memory model are given in Chapter 15.

115

CHAPTER 16. DISTRIBUTED SHARED MEMORY

116

simulation collapses completely if a majority of processes fail.

16.1

Message passing from shared memory

Well start with the easy direction. We can build a reliable FIFO channel
from single-writer single-reader registers using polling. The naive approach
is that for each edge uv in the message-passing system, we create a (very big)
register ruv , and u writes the entire sequence of every message it has ever
sent to v to ruv every time it wants to do a new send. To receive messages,
v polls all of its incoming registers periodically and delivers any messages in
the histories that it hasnt processed yet.2
The ludicrous register width can be reduced by adding in an acknowledgment mechanism in a separate register ackvu ; the idea is that u will only
write one message at a time to ruv , and will queue subsequent messages until v writes in ackvu that the message in ruv has been received. With some
tinkering, it is possible to knock ruv down to only three possible states (sending 0, sending 1, and reset) and ackvu down to a single bit (value-received,
reset-received), but thats probably overkill for most applications.
Process failures dont affect any of these protocols, except that a dead
process stops sending and receiving.

16.2

The Attiya-Bar-Noy-Dolev algorithm

Here we show how to implement shared memory from message passing. Well
assume that our system is asynchronous, that the network is complete, and
that we are only dealing with f < n/2 crash failures. Well also assume we
only want to build single-writer registers, just to keep things simple; we can
extend to multi-writer registers later.
Heres the algorithm, which is due to Attiya, Bar-Noy, and Dolev [ABND95];
see also [Lyn96, 17.1.3]. (Section 9.3 of [AW04] gives an equivalent algorithm, but the details are buried in an implementation of totally-ordered
broadcast). Well make n copies of the register, one on each process. Each
processs copy will hold a pair (value, timestamp) where timestamps are (unbounded) integer values. Initially, everybody starts with (, 0). A process
updates its copy with new values (v, t) upon receiving write(v, t) from any
other process p, provided t is greater than the processs current timestamp.
2

If we are really cheap about using registers, and are willing to accept even more
absurdity in the register size, we can just have u write every message it ever sends to ru ,
and have each v poll all the ru and filter out any messages intended for other processes.

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It then responds to p with ack(v, t), whether or not it updated its local
copy. A process will also respond to a message read(u) with a response
ack(value, timestamp, u); here u is a nonce3 used to distinguish between different read operations so that a process cant be confused by out-of-date
acknowledgments.
To write a value, the writer increments its timestamp, updates its value
and sends write(value, timestamp) to all other processes. The write operation terminates when the writer has received acknowledgments containing
the new timestamp value from a majority of processes.
To read a value, a reader does two steps:
1. It sends read(u) to all processes (where u is any value it hasnt used
before) and waits to receive acknowledgments from a majority of the
processes. It takes the value v associated with the maximum timestamp t as its return value (no matter how many processes sent it).
2. It then sends write(v, t) to all processes, and waits for a response
ack(v, t) from a majority of the processes. Only then does it return.
(Any extra messages, messages with the wrong nonce, etc. are discarded.)
Both reads and writes cost (n) messages ((1) per process).
Intuition: Nobody can return from a write or a read until they are sure
that subsequent reads will return the same (or a later) value. A process
can only be sure of this if it knows that the values collected by a read will
include at least one copy of the value written or read. But since majorities
overlap, if a majority of the processes have a current copy of v, then the
majority read quorum will include it. Sending write(v, t) to all processes
and waiting for acknowledgments from a majority is just a way of ensuring
that a majority do in fact have timestamps that are at least t.
If we omit the write stage of a read operation, we may violate linearizability. An example would be a situation where two values (1 and 2, say),
have been written to exactly one process each, with the rest still holding
the initial value . A reader that observes 1 and (n 1)/2 copies of
will return 1, while a reader that observes 2 and (n 1)/2 copies of will
return 2. In the absence of the write stage, we could have an arbitrarily
long sequence of readers return 1, 2, 1, 2, . . . , all with no concurrency. This
3
A nonce is any value that is guaranteed to be used at most once (the term originally
comes from cryptography, which in turn got it from linguistics). In practice, a reader will
most likely generate a nonce by combining its process id with a local timestamp.

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would not be consistent with any sequential execution in which 1 and 2 are
only written once.

16.3

Proof of linearizability

Our intuition may be strong, but we still need a proof the algorithm works.
In particular, we want to show that for any trace T of the ABD protocol,
there is an trace of an atomic register object that gives the same sequence
of invoke and response events. The usual way to do this is to find a linearization of the read and write operations: a total order that extends the
observed order in T where 1 < 2 in T if and only if 1 ends before 2
starts. Sometimes its hard to construct such an order, but in this case its
easy: we can just use the timestamps associated with the values written or
read in each operation. Specifically, we define the timestamp of a write or
read operation as the timestamp used in the write(v, t) messages sent out
during the implementation of that operation, and we put 1 before 2 if:
1. 1 has a lower timestamp than 2 , or
2. 1 has the same timestamp as 2 , 1 is a write, and 2 is a read, or
3. 1 has the same timestamp as 2 and 1 <T 2 , or
4. none of the other cases applies, and we feel like putting 1 first.
The intent is that we pick some total ordering that is consistent with both
<T and the timestamp ordering (with writes before reads when timestamps
are equal). To make this work we have to show (a) that these two orderings
are in fact consistent, and (b) that the resulting ordering produces values
consistent with an atomic register: in particular, that each read returns the
value of the last preceding write.
Part (b) is easy: since timestamps only increase in response to writes,
each write is followed by precisely those reads with the same timestamp,
which are precisely those that returned the value written.
For part (a), suppose that 1 <T 2 . The first case is when 2 is a read.
Then before the end of 1 , a set S of more than n/2 processes send the 1
process an ack(v1, t1 ) message. Since local timestamps only increase, from
this point on any ack(v2 , t2 , u) message sent by a process in S has t2 t1 .
Let S 0 be the set of processes sending ack(v2 , t2 , u) messages processed by
2 . Since |S| > n/2 and |S 0 | > n/2, we have S S 0 is nonempty and so S 0
includes a process that sent ack(v2 , t2 ) with t2 t1 . So 2 is serialized after

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1 . The second case is when 2 is a write; but then 1 returns a timestamp

that precedes the writers increment in 2 , and so again is serialized first.

16.4

Proof that f < n/2 is necessary

This is pretty much the standard partition argument that f < n/2 is necessary to do anything useful in a message-passing system. Split the processes
into two sets S and S 0 of size n/2 each. Suppose the writer is in S. Consider
an execution where the writer does a write operation, but all messages between S and S 0 are delayed. Since the writer cant tell if the S 0 processes are
slow or dead, it eventually returns. Now let some reader in S 0 attempt to
read the simulated register, again delaying all messages between S and S 0 ;
now the reader is forced to return some value without knowing whether the
S processes are slow or dead. If the reader doesnt return the value written,
we lose. If by some miracle it does, then we lose in the execution where the
write didnt happen and all the processes in S really were dead.

16.5

Multiple writers

So far we have assumed a single writer. The main advantage of this approach
is that we dont have to do much to manage timestamps: the single writer
can just keep track of its own. With multiple writers we can use essentially
the same algorithm, but each write needs to perform an initial round of
gathering timestamps so that it can pick a new timestamp bigger than those
that have come before. We also extend the timestamps to be of the form
hcount, idi, lexicographically ordered, so that two timestamps with the same
count field are ordered by process id. The modified write algorithm is:
1. Send read(u) to all processes and wait to receive acknowledgments
from a majority of the processes.
2. Set my timestamp to t = (maxq countq + 1, id) where the max is taken
over all processes q that sent me an acknowledgment. Note that this
is a two-field timestamp that is compared lexicographically, with the
id field used only to prevent duplicate timestamps.
3. Send write(v, t) to all processes, and wait for a response ack(v, t) from
a majority of processes.
This increases the cost of a write by a constant factor, but in the end
we still have only a linear number of messages. The proof of linearizability

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120

is essentially the same as for the single-writer algorithm, except now we

must consider the case of two write operations by different processes. Here
we have that if 1 <T 2 , then 1 gets acknowledgments of its write with
timestamp t1 from a majority of processes before 2 starts its initial phase
to compute count. Since 2 waits for acknowledgments from a majority of
processes as well, these majorities overlap, so 2 s timestamp t2 must exceed
t1. So the linearization ordering previously defined still works.

16.6

Other operations

The basic ABD framework can be extended to support other operations.

One such operation is a collect [SSW91], where we read n registers in
parallel with no guarantee that they are read at the same time. This can
trivially be implemented by running n copies of ABD in parallel, and can
be implemented with the same time and message complexity as ABD for a
single register by combining the messages from the parallel executions into
single (possibly very large) messages.

Chapter 17

Mutual exclusion
For full details see [AW04, Chapter 4] or [Lyn96, Chapter 10].

17.1

The problem

The goal is to share some critical resource between processes without more
than one using it at a timethis is the fundamental problem in time-sharing
systems.
The solution is to only allow access while in a specially-marked block of
code called a critical section, and only allow one process at a time to be
in a critical section.
A mutual exclusion protocol guarantees this, usually in an asynchronous shared-memory model.
Formally: We want a process to cycle between states trying (trying
to get into critical section), critical (in critical section), exiting (cleaning
up so that other processes can enter their critical sections), and remainder (everything elseessentially just going about its non-critical business).
Only in the trying and exiting states does the process run the mutual exclusion protocol to decide when to switch to the next state; in the critical
or remainder states it switches to the next state on its own.

17.2

Goals

(See also [AW04, 4.2], [Lyn96, 10.2].)

Core mutual exclusion requirements:
Mutual exclusion At most one process is in the critical state at a time.
121

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No deadlock (progress) If there is at least one process in a trying state,

then eventually some process enters a critical state; similarly for exiting and remainder states.
Note that the protocol is not required to guarantee that processes leave
the critical or remainder state, but we generally have to insist that the
processes at least leave the critical state on their own to make progress.
Additional useful properties (not satisfied by all mutual exclusion protocols; see [Lyn96, 10.4)]:
No lockout (lockout-freedom): If there is a particular process in a trying
or exiting state, that process eventually leaves that state. This means
that I dont starve because somebody else keeps jumping past me and
seizing the critical resource before I can.
Stronger versions of lockout-freedom include explicit time bounds (how
many rounds can go by before I get in) or bounded bypass (nobody gets
in more than k times before I do).

17.3

Mutual exclusion using strong primitives

See [AW04, 4.3] or [Lyn96, 10.9]. The idea is that we will use some sort of
read-modify-write register, where the RMW operation computes a new
value based on the old value of the register and writes it back as a single
atomic operation, usually returning the old value to the caller as well.

17.3.1

Test and set

A test-and-set operation does the following sequence of actions atomically:

1
2
3

oldValue read(bit)
write(bit, 1)
return oldValue

Typically there is also a second reset operation for setting the bit back
to zero. For some implementations, this reset operation may only be used
safely by the last process to get 0 from the test-and-set bit.
Because a test-and-set operation is atomic, if two processes both try to
perform test-and-set on the same bit, only one of them will see a return value

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of 0. This is not true if each process simply executes the above code on a
stock atomic register: there is an execution in which both processes read
0, then both write 1, then both return 0 to whatever called the non-atomic
test-and-set subroutine.
Test-and-set provides a trivial implementation of mutual exclusion, shown
in Algorithm 17.1.
1

while true do
// trying
while testAndSet(lock) = 1 do nothing
// critical
(do critical section stuff)
// exiting
reset(lock)
// remainder
(do remainder stuff)
Algorithm 17.1: Mutual exclusion using test-and-set

It is easy to see that this code provides mutual exclusion, as once one
process gets a 0 out of lock, no other can escape the inner while loop until
that process calls the reset operation in its exiting state. It also provides
progress (assuming the lock is initially set to 0); the only part of the code
that is not straight-line code (which gets executed eventually by the fairness
condition) is the inner loop, and if lock is 0, some process escapes it, while
if lock is 1, some process is in the region between the testAndSet call and
the reset call, and so it eventually gets to reset and lets the next process
in (or itself, if it is very fast).
The algorithm does not provide lockout-freedom: nothing prevents a
single fast process from scooping up the lock bit every time it goes through
the outer loop, while the other processes ineffectually grab at it just after it
is taken away. Lockout-freedom requires a more sophisticated turn-taking
strategy.

17.3.2

A lockout-free algorithm using an atomic queue

Basic idea: In the trying phase, each process enqueues itself on the end of a
shared queue (assumed to be an atomic operation). When a process comes
to the head of the queue, it enters the critical section, and when exiting it
dequeues itself. So the code would look something like Algorithm 17.2.

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124

Note that this requires a queue that supports a head operation. Not all
implementations of queues have this property.
1

2
3

while true do
// trying
enq(Q, myId)
while head(Q) 6= myId do nothing
// critical
(do critical section stuff)
// exiting
deq(Q)
// remainder
(do remainder stuff)
Algorithm 17.2: Mutual exclusion using a queue

Here the proof of mutual exclusion is that only the process whose id is at
the head of the queue can enter its critical section. Formally, we maintain an
invariant that any process whose program counter is between the inner while
loop and the call to deq(Q) must be at the head of the queue; this invariant
is easy to show because a process cant leave the while loop unless the test
fails (i.e., it is already at the head of the queue), no enq operation changes
the head value (if the queue is nonempty), and the deq operation (which
does change the head value) can only be executed by a process already at
the head (from the invariant).
Deadlock-freedom follows from proving a similar invariant that every
element of the queue is the id of some process in the trying, critical, or
exiting states, so eventually the process at the head of the queue passes the
inner loop, executes its critical section, and dequeues its id.
Lockout-freedom follows from the fact that once a process is at position
k in the queue, every execution of a critical section reduces its position by 1;
when it reaches the front of the queue (after some finite number of critical
sections), it gets the critical section itself.
17.3.2.1

Reducing space complexity

Following [AW04, 4.3.2], we can give an implementation of this algorithm

using a single read-modify-write (RMW) register instead of a queue; this
drastically reduces the (shared) space needed by the algorithm. The reason
this works is because we dont really need to keep track of the position of

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125

each process in the queue itself; instead, we can hand out numerical tickets
to each process and have the process take responsibility for remembering
where its place in line is.
The RMW register has two fields, first and last, both initially 0. Incrementing last simulates an enqueue, while incrementing first simulates a
dequeue. The trick is that instead of testing if it is at the head of the queue,
a process simply remembers the value of the last field when it enqueued
itself, and waits for the first field to equal it.
Algorithm 17.3 shows the code from Algorithm 17.2 rewritten to use this
technique. The way to read the RMW operations is that the first argument
specifies the variable to update and the second specifies an expression for
computing the new value. Each RMW operation returns the old state of the
object, before the update.
1

3
4

while true do
// trying
position RMW(V, hV.first, V.last + 1i)
// enqueue
while RMW(V, V ).first 6= position.last do
nothing
// critical
(do critical section stuff)
// exiting
RMW(V, hV.first + 1, V.lasti)
// dequeue
// remainder
(do remainder stuff)

Algorithm 17.3: Mutual exclusion using read-modify-write

17.4

Mutual exclusion using only atomic registers

While mutual exclusion is easier using powerful primitives, we can also solve
the problem using only registers.

17.4.1

Petersons tournament algorithm

Algorithm 17.4 shows Petersons lockout-free mutual exclusion protocol for

two processes p0 and p1 [Pet81] (see also [AW04, 4.4.2] or [Lyn96, 10.5.1]).

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126

It uses only atomic registers.

1
2
3
4

5
6
7
8

shared data:
waiting, initially arbitrary
present[i] for i {0, 1}, initially 0
Code for process i:
while true do
// trying
present[i] 1
waiting i
while true do
if present[i] = 0 then break

if waiting 6= i then break

10
11

// critical
(do critical section stuff)
// exiting
present[i] = 0
// remainder
(do remainder stuff)

Algorithm 17.4: Petersons mutual exclusion algorithm for two processes

This uses three bits to communicate: present[0] and present[1] indicate
which of p0 and p1 are participating, and waiting enforces turn-taking. The
protocol requires that waiting be multi-writer, but its OK for present[0] and
present[1] to be single-writer.
In the description of the protocol, we write Lines 8 and 10 as two separate
lines because they include two separate read operations, and the order of
these reads is important.
17.4.1.1

Correctness of Petersons protocol

Intuitively, lets consider all the different ways that the entry code of the two
processes could interact. There are basically two things that each process
does: it sets its own present in Line 5 and grabs the waiting variable in
Line 6. Heres a typical case where one process gets in first:
1. p0 sets present[0] 1

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127

2. p0 sets waiting 0
3. p0 reads present[1] = 0 and enters critical section
4. p1 sets present[1] 1
5. p1 sets waiting 1
6. p1 reads present[0] = 1 and waiting = 1 and loops
7. p0 sets present[0] 0
8. p1 reads present[0] = 0 and enters critical section
The idea is that if I see a 0 in your present variable, I know that you
arent playing, and can just go in.
Heres a more interleaved execution where the waiting variable decides
the winner:
1. p0 sets present[0] 1
2. p0 sets waiting 0
3. p1 sets present[1] 1
4. p1 sets waiting 1
5. p0 reads present[1] = 1
6. p1 reads present[0] = 1
7. p0 reads waiting = 1 and enters critical section
8. p1 reads present[0] = 1 and waiting = 1 and loops
9. p0 sets present[0] 0
10. p1 reads present[0] = 0 and enters critical section
Note that its the process that set the waiting variable last (and thus
sees its own value) that stalls. This is necessary because the earlier process
might long since have entered the critical section.
Sadly, examples are not proofs, so to show that this works in general, we
need to formally verify each of mutual exclusion and lockout-freedom. Mutual exclusion is a safety property, so we expect to prove it using invariants.
The proof in [Lyn96] is based on translating the pseudocode directly into

CHAPTER 17. MUTUAL EXCLUSION

128

automata (including explicit program counter variables); well do essentially

the same proof but without doing the full translation to automata. Below,
we write that pi is at line k if it the operation in line k is enabled but has
not occurred yet.
Lemma 17.4.1. If present[i] = 0, then pi is at Line 5 or 14.
Proof. Immediate from the code.
Lemma 17.4.2. If pi is at Line 12, and pi is at Line 8, 10, or 12, then
waiting = i.
Proof. Well do the case i = 0; the other case is symmetric. The proof is by
induction on the schedule. We need to check that any event that makes the
left-hand side of the invariant true or the right-hand side false also makes
the whole invariant true. The relevent events are:
Transitions by p0 from Line 8 to Line 12. These occur only if present[1] =
0, implying p1 is at Line Line 5 or 14 by Lemma 17.4.1. In this case
the second part of the left-hand side is false.
Transitions by p0 from Line 10 to Line 12. These occur only if waiting 6=
0, so the right-hand side is true.
Transitions by p1 from Line 6 to Line 8. These set waiting to 1, making
the right-hand side true.
Transitions that set waiting to 0. These are transitions by p0 from
Line 6 to Line 10, making the left-hand side false.

We can now read mutual exclusion directly off of Lemma 17.4.2: if both
p0 and p1 are at Line 12, then we get waiting = 1 and waiting = 0, a
contradiction.
To show progress, observe that the only place where both processes can
get stuck forever is in the loop at Lines 8 and 10. But then waiting isnt
changing, and so some process i reads waiting = i and leaves. To show
lockout-freedom, observe that if p0 is stuck in the loop while p1 enters the
critical section, then after p1 leaves it sets present[1] to 0 in Line 13 (which
lets p0 in if p0 reads present[1] in time), but even if it then sets present[1]
back to 1 in Line 5, it still sets waiting to 1 in Line 6, which lets p0 into
the critical section. With some more tinkering this argument shows that p1

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129

enters the critical section at most twice while p0 is in the trying state, giving
2-bounded bypass; see [Lyn96, Lemma 10.12]. With even more tinkering we
get a constant time bound on the waiting time for process i to enter the
critical section, assuming the other process never spends more than O(1)
time inside the critical section.
17.4.1.2

Generalization to n processes

(See also [AW04, 4.4.3].)

The easiest way to generalize Petersons two-process algorithm to n processes is to organize a tournament in the form of log-depth binary tree; this
method was invented by Peterson and Fischer [PF77]. At each node of the
tree, the roles of the two processes are taken by the winners of the subtrees,
i.e., the processes who have entered their critical sections in the two-process
algorithms corresponding to the child nodes. The winner of the tournament
as a whole enters the real critical section, and afterwards walks back down
the tree unlocking all the nodes it won in reverse order. Its easy to see that
this satisfies mutual exclusion, and not much harder to show that it satisfies
lockout-freedomin the latter case, the essential idea is that if the winner
at some node reaches the root infinitely often then lockout-freedom at that
node means that the winner of each child node reaches the root infinitely
often.
The most natural way to implement the nodes is to have present[0] and
present[1] at each node be multi-writer variables that can be written to by
any process in the appropriate subtree. Because the present variables dont
do much, we can also implement them as the OR of many single-writer
variables (this is what is done in [Lyn96, 10.5.3]), but there is no immediate
payoff to doing this since the waiting variables are still multi-writer.
Nice properties of this algorithm are that it uses only bits and that its
very fast: O(log n) time in the absence of contention.

17.4.2

Fast mutual exclusion

With a bit of extra work, we can reduce the no-contention cost of mutual
exclusion to O(1), while keeping whatever performance we previously had
in the high-contention case. The trick (due to Lamport [Lam87]) is to put
an object at the entrance to the protocol that diverts a solo process onto a
fast path that lets it bypass the n-process mutex that everybody else ends
up on.
Our presentation mostly follows [AW04][4.4.5], which uses the splitter

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130

abstraction of Moir and Anderson [MA95] to separate out the mechanism

for diverting a lone process.1 Code for a splitter is given in Algorithm 17.5.
shared data:
atomic register race, big enough to hold an id, initially
atomic register door, big enough to hold a bit, initially open
procedure splitter(id)
race id
if door = closed then
return right

1
2
3
4
5
6

door closed
if race = id then
return stop
else
return down

7
8
9
10
11

Algorithm 17.5: Implementation of a splitter

A splitter assigns to each processes that arrives at it the value right,
down, or stop. The useful properties of splitters are that if at least one
process arrives at a splitter, then (a) at least one process returns right or
stop; and (b) at least one process returns down or stop; (c) at most one
process returns stop; and (d) any process that runs by itself returns stop.
The first two properties will be useful when we consider the problem of
renaming in Chapter 24; we will prove them there. The last two properties
are what we want for mutual exclusion.
The names of the variables race and door follow the presentation in
[AW04, 4.4.5]; Moir and Anderson [MA95], following Lamport [Lam87],
call these X and Y . As in [MA95], we separate out the right and down
outcomeseven though they are equivalent for mutexbecause we will need
them later for other applications.
The intuition behind Algorithm 17.5 is that setting door to closed closes
the door to new entrants, and the last entrant to write its id to race wins
(its a slow race), assuming nobody else writes race and messes things up.
The added cost of the splitter is always O(1), since there are no loops.
To reset the splitter, write open to door. This allows new processes to
enter the splitter and possibly return stop.
1

Moir and Anderson call these things one-time building blocks, but the name splitter has become standard in subsequent work.

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131

Lemma 17.4.3. After each time that door is set to open, at most one
process running Algorithm 17.5 returns stop.
Proof. To simplify the argument, we assume that each process calls splitter
at most once.
Let t be some time at which door is set to open ( in the case of the
initial value). Let St be the set of processes that read open from door after
time t and before the next time at which some process writes closed to door,
and that later return stop by reaching Line 9.
Then every process in St reads door before any process in St writes door.
It follows that every process in St writes race before any process in St reads
race. If some process p is not the last process in St to write race, it will not
see its own id, and will not return stop. But only one process can be the
last process in St to write race.2
Lemma 17.4.4. If a process runs Algorithm 17.5 by itself starting from a
configuration in which door = open, it returns stop.
Proof. Follows from examining a solo execution: the process sets race to id,
reads open from door, then reads id from race. This causes it to return stop
as claimed.
To turn this into an n-process mutex algorithm, we use the splitter to
separate out at most one process (the one that gets stop) onto a fast path
that bypasses the slow path taken by the rest of the processes. The slowpath process first fight among themselves to get through an n-process mutex;
the winner then fights in a 2-process mutex with the process (if any) on the
fast path.
Releasing the mutex is the reverse of acquiring it. If I followed the fast
path, I release the 2-process mutex first then reset the splitter. If I followed
the slow path, I release the 2-process mutex first then the n-process mutex.
This gives mutual exclusion with O(1) cost for any process that arrives
before there is any contention (O(1) for the splitter plus O(1) for the 2process mutex).
A complication is that if nobody wins the splitter, there is no fast-path
process to reset it. If we dont want to accept that the fast path just breaks
forever in this case, we have to include a mechanism for a slow-path process
to reset the splitter if it can be assured that there is no fast-path process
2

Its worth noting that this last process still might not return stop, because some later
processnot in St might overwrite race. This can happen even if nobody ever resets the
splitter.

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132

left in the system. The simplest way to do this is to have each process mark
a bit in an array to show it is present, and have each slow-path process,
while still holding all the mutexes, check on its way out if the door bit is
set and no processes claim to be present. If it sees all zeros (except for
itself) after seeing door = closed, it can safely conclude that there is no
fast-path process and reset the splitter itself. The argument then is that the
last slow-path process to leave will do this, re-enabling the fast path once
there is no contention again. This approach is taken implicitly in Lamports
original algorithm, which combines the splitter and the mutex algorithms
into a single miraculous blob.

17.4.3

Lamports Bakery algorithm

See [AW04, 4.4.1] or [Lyn96, 10.7].

This is a lockout-free mutual exclusion algorithm that uses only singlewriter registers (although some of the registers may end up holding arbitrarily large values). Code for the Bakery algorithm is given as Algorithm 17.6.

1
2
3
4

5
6
7
8
9
10

shared data:
choosing[i], an atomic bit for each i, initially 0
number[i], an unbounded atomic register, initially 0
Code for process i:
while true do
// trying
choosing[i] 1
number[i] 1 + maxj6=i number[j]
choosing[i] 0
for j 6= i do
loop until choosing[j] = 0
loop until number[j] = 0 or hnumber[i], ii < hnumber[j], ji
// critical
(do critical section stuff)
// exiting
number[i] 0
// remainder
(do remainder stuff)
Algorithm 17.6: Lamports Bakery algorithm
Note that several of these lines are actually loops; this is obvious for

CHAPTER 17. MUTUAL EXCLUSION

133

Lines 9 and 10, but is also true for Line 6, which includes an implicit loop
to read all n 1 values of number[j].
Intuition for mutual exclusion is that if you have a lower number than I
do, then I block waiting for you; for lockout-freedom, eventually I have the
smallest number. (There are some additional complications involving the
choosing bits that we are sweeping under the rug here.) For a real proof
see [AW04, 4.4.1] or [Lyn96, 10.7].
Selling point is a strong near-FIFO guarantee and the use of only singlewriter registers (which need not even be atomicits enough that they return correct values when no write is in progress). Weak point is unbounded
registers.

17.4.4

Lower bound on the number of registers

There is a famous result due to Burns and Lynch [BL93] that any mutual
exclusion protocol using only read/write registers requires at least n of them.
Details are in [Lyn96, 10.8]. A slightly different version of the argument
is given in [AW04, 4.4.4]. The proof is another nice example of an indistinguishability proof, where we use the fact that if a group of processes cant
tell the difference between two executions, they behave the same in both.
Assumptions: We have a protocol that guarantees mutual exclusion and
progress. Our base objects are all atomic registers.
Key idea: In order for some process p to enter the critical section, it has
to do at least one write to let the other processes know it is doing so. If
not, they cant tell if p ever showed up at all, so eventually either some p0
will enter the critical section and violate mutual exclusion or (in the no-p
execution) nobody enters the critical section and we violate progress. Now
suppose we can park a process pi on each register ri with a pending write
to i; in this case we say that pi covers ri . If every register is so covered, we
can let p go ahead and do whatever writes it likes and then deliver all the
covering writes at once, wiping out anything p did. Now the other processes
again dont know if p exists or not. So we can say something stronger: before
some process p can enter a critical section, it has to write to an uncovered
register.
The hard part is showing that we can cover all the registers without
letting p know that there are other processes waitingif p can see that
other processes are waiting, it can just sit back and wait for them to go
through the critical section and make progress that way. So our goal is to
produce states in which (a) processes p1 . . . , pk (for some k) between them
cover k registers, and (b) the resulting configuration is indistinguishable

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134

from an idle configuration to pk+1 . . . pn .

Lemma 17.4.5. Starting from any idle configuration C, there exists an
execution in which only processes p1 . . . pk take steps that leads to a configuration C 0 such that (a) C 0 is indistinguishable by any of pk+1 . . . pn from
some idle configuration C 00 and (b) k registers are covered by p1 . . . pk in C 0 .
Proof. The proof is by induction on k. For k = 1, just run p1 until it is
about to do a write, let C 0 be the resulting configuration and let C 00 = C.
For larger k, the essential idea is that starting from C, we first run
to a configuration C1 where p1 . . . pk1 cover k 1 registers and C1 is indistinguishable from an idle configuration by the remaining processes, and
then run pk until it covers one more register. If we let p1 . . . pk1 go, they
overwrite anything pk wrote. Unfortunately, they may not come back to
covering the same registers as before if we rerun the induction hypothesis
(and in particular might cover the same register that pk does). So we have
to look for a particular configuration C1 that not only covers k 1 registers
but also has an extension that covers the same k 1 registers.
Heres how we find it: Start in C. Run the induction hypothesis to get
C1 ; here there is a set W1 of k 1 registers covered in C1 . Now let processes
p1 through pk1 do their pending writes, then each enter the critical section,
leave it, and finish, and rerun the induction hypothesis to get to a state C2 ,
indistinguishable from an idle configuration by pk and up, in which k 1
registers in W2 are covered. Repeat to get sets
W3 , W4 , etc. Since this
r
sequence is unbounded, and there are only k1
distinct sets of registers to
cover (where r is the number of registers), eventually we have Wi = Wj for
some i 6= j. The configurations Ci and Cj are now our desired configurations
covering the same k 1 registers.
Now that we have Ci and Cj , we run until we get to Ci . We now run pk
until it is about to write some register not covered by Ci (it must do so, or
otherwise we can wipe out all of its writes while its in the critical section
and then go on to violate mutual exclusion). Then we let the rest of p1
through pk1 do all their writes (which immediately destroys any evidence
that pk ran at all) and run the execution that gets them to Cj . We now
have k 1 registers covered by p1 through pk1 and a k-th register covered
by pk , in a configuration that is indistinguishable from idle: this proves the
induction step.
The final result follows by the fact that when k = n we cover n registers;
this implies that there are n registers to cover.

CHAPTER 17. MUTUAL EXCLUSION

17.5

135

RMR complexity

Its not hard to see that we cant build a shared-memory mutex without
busy-waiting: any process that is waiting cant detect that the critical section is safe to enter without reading a register, but if that register tells it
that it should keep waiting, it is back where it started and has to read it
again. This makes our standard step-counting complexity measures useless
for describe the worst-case complexity of a mutual exclusion algorithm.
However, the same argument that suggests we can ignore local computation in a message-passing model suggests that we can ignore local operations on registers in a shared-memory model. Real multiprocessors have
memory hierarchies where memory that is close to the CPU (or one of the
CPUs) is generally much faster than memory that is more distant. This
suggests charging only for remote memory references, or RMRs, where
each register is local to one of the processes and only operations on nonlocal are expensive. This has the advantage of more accurately modeling
real costs [MCS91, And90], and allowing us to build busy-waiting mutual
exclusion algorithms with costs we can actually analyze.
As usual, there is a bit of a divergence here between theory and practice.
Practically, we are interested in algorithms with good real-time performance,
and RMR complexity becomes a heuristic for choosing how to assign memory
locations. This gives rise to very efficient mutual exclusion algorithms for
real machines, of which the most widely used is the beautiful MCS algorithm
of Mellor-Crummey and Scott [MCS91]. Theoretically, we are interested in
the question of how efficiently we can solve mutual exclusion in our formal
model, and RMR complexity becomes just another complexity measure, one
that happens to allow busy-waiting on local variables.

17.5.1

Cache-coherence vs. distributed shared memory

The basic idea of RMR complexity is that a process doesnt pay for operations on local registers. But what determines which operations are local?
In the cache-coherent model (CC for short), once a process reads a
register it retains a local copy as long as nobody updates it. So if I do a sequence of read operations with no intervening operations by other processes,
I may pay an RMR for the first one (if my cache is out of date), but the rest
are free. The assumption is that each process can cache registers, and there
is some cache-coherence protocol that guarantees that all the caches stay
up to date. We may or may not pay RMRs for write operations or other
read operations, depending on the details of the cache-coherence protocol,

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136

but for upper bounds it is safest to assume that we do.

In the distributed shared memory model (DSM), each register is
assigned permanently to a single process. Other processes can read or write
the register, but only the owner gets to do so without paying an RMR. Here
memory locations are nailed down to specific processes.
In general, we expect the cache-coherent model to be cheaper than the
distributed shared-memory model, if we ignore constant factors. The reason
is that if we run a DSM algorithm in a CC model, then the process p to
which a register r is assigned incurs an RMR only if some other process
q accesses p since ps last access. But then we can amortize ps RMR by
charging q double. Since q incurs an RMR in the CC model, this tells us that
we pay at most twice as many RMRs in DSM as in CC for any algorithm.
The converse is not true: there are (mildly exotic) problems for which
it is known that CC algorithms are asymptotically more efficient than DSM
algorithms [Gol11, DH04].

17.5.2

RMR complexity of Petersons algorithm

As a warm-up, lets look at the RMR complexity of Petersons two-process

mutual exclusion algorithm (Algorithm 17.4). Acquiring the mutex requires going through mostly straight-line code, except for the loop that
tests present[i] and waiting.
In the DSM model, spinning on present[i] is not a problem (we can
make it a local variable of process i). But waiting is trouble. Whichever
process we dont assign it to will pay an RMR every time it looks at it. So
Petersons algorithm behaves badly by the RMR measure in this model.
Things are better in the CC model. Now process i may pay RMRs for its
first reads of present[i] and waiting, but any subsequent reads are free unless
process i changes one of them. But any change to either of the variables
causes process i to leave the loop. It follows that process i pays at most 3
RMRs to get through the busy-waiting loop, giving an RMR complexity of
O(1).
RMR complexities for parts of a protocol that access different registers
add just like step complexities, so the Peterson-Fischer tree construction
described in 17.4.1.2 works here too. The result is O(log n) RMRs per
critical section access, but only in the CC model.

CHAPTER 17. MUTUAL EXCLUSION

17.5.3

137

Mutual exclusion in the DSM model

Yang and Anderson [YA95] give a mutual exclusion algorithm for the DSM
model that requires (log n) RMRs to reach the critical section. This is now
known to be optimal for deterministic algorithms [AHW08]. The core of the
algorithm is a 2-process mutex similar to Petersons, with some tweaks so
that each process spins only on its own registers. Pseudocode is given in
Algorithm 17.7; this is adapted from [YA95, Figure 1].
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

11
12
13
14

C[side(i)] i
T i
P [i] 0
rival C[side(i)]
if rival 6= and T = i then
if P [rival] = 0 then
P [rival] = 1
while P [i] = 0 do spin
if T = i then
while P [i] 1 do spin
// critical section goes here
C[side(i)]
rival T
if rival 6= i then
P [rival] 2
Algorithm 17.7: Yang-Anderson mutex for two processes

The algorithm is designed to be used in a tree construction where a

process with id in the range {1 . . . n/2} first fights with all other processes
in this range, and similarly for processes in the range {n/2 + 1 . . . n}. The
function side(i) is 0 for the first group of processes and 1 for the second.
The variables C[0] and C[1] are used to record which process is the winner
for each side, and also take the place of the present variables in Petersons
algorithm. Each process has its own variable P [i] that it spins on when
blocked; this variable is initially 0 and ranges over {0, 1, 2}; this is used to
signal a process that it is safe to proceed, and tests on P substitute for tests
on the non-local variables in Petersons algorithm. Finally, the variable T
is used (like waiting in Petersons algorithm) to break ties: when T = i, its
is turn to wait.
Initially, C[0] = C[1] = and P [i] = 0 for all i.

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138

When I want to enter my critical section, I first set C[side(i)] so you can
find me; this also has the same effect as setting present[side(i)] in Petersons
algorithm. I then point T to myself and look for you. Ill block if I see
C[side(i)] = 1 and T = i. This can occur in two ways: one is that I really
write T after you did, but the other is that you only wrote C[side(i)] but
havent written T yet. In the latter case, you will signal to me that T may
have changed by setting P [i] to 1. I have to check T again (because maybe
I really did write T later), and if it is still i, then I know that you are ahead
of me and will succeed in entering your critical section. In this case I can
safely spin on P [i] waiting for it to become 2, which signals that you have
left.
There is a proof that this actually works in [YA95], but its 27 pages
of very meticulously-demonstrated invariants (in fairness, this includes the
entire algorithm, including the tree parts that we omitted here). For intuition, this is not much more helpful than having a program mechanically
check all the transitions, since the algorithm for two processes is effectively
finite-state if we ignore the issue with different processes i jumping into the
role of side(i).
A slightly less rigorous proof but more human-accessible proof would be
analogous to the proof of Petersons algorithm. We need to show two things:
first, that no two processes ever both enter the critical section, and second,
that no process gets stuck.
For the first part, consider two processes i and j, where side(i) = 0 and
side(j) = 1. We cant have both i and j skip the loops, because whichever
one writes T last sees itself in T . Suppose that this is process i and that
j skips the loops. Then T = i and P [i] = 0 as long as j is in the critical
section, so i blocks. Alternatively, suppose i writes T last but does so after
j first reads T . Now i and j both enter the loops. But again i sees T = i on
its second test and blocks on the second loop until j sets P [i] to 2, which
doesnt happen until after j finishes its critical section.
Now let us show that i doesnt get stuck. Again well assume that i
wrote T second.
If j skips the loops, then j sets P [i] = 2 on its way out as long as T = i;
this falsifies both loop tests. If this happens after i first sets P [i] to 0, only
i can set P [i] back to 0, so i escapes its first loop, and any j 0 that enters
from the 1 side will see P [i] = 2 before attempting to set P [i] to 1, so P [i]
remains at 2 until i comes back around again. If j sets P [i] to 2 before i
sets P [i] to 0 (or doesnt set it at all because T = j, then C[side(j)] is set
to before i reads it, so i skips the loops.
If j doesnt skip the loops, then P [i] and P [j] are both set to 1 after i

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139

and j enter the loopy part. Because j waits for P [j] 6= 0, when it looks at
T the second time it will see T = i 6= j and will skip the second loop. This
causes it to eventually set P [i] to 2 or set C[side(j)] to before i reads it
as in the previous case, so again i eventually reaches its critical section.
Since the only operations inside a loop are on local variables, the algorithm has O(1) RMR complexity. For the full tree this becomes O(log n).

17.5.4

Lower bounds

For deterministic algorithms, there is a lower bound due to Attiya, Hendler,

and Woelfel [AHW08] that shows that any one-shot mutual exclusion algorithm for n processes incurs (n log n) total RMRs in either the CC or DSM
models (which implies that some single process incurs (log n) RMRs). This
is based on an earlier breakthrough lower bound of Fan and Lynch [FL06]
that proved the same lower bound for the number of times a register changes
state. Both bounds are information-theoretic: a family of n! executions is
constructed containing all possible orders in which the processes enter the
critical section, and it is shown that each RMR or state change only contributes O(1) bits to choosing between them.
For randomized algorithms, Hendler and Woelfel [HW11] have an algorithm that uses O(log n/ log log n) expected RMRs against an adaptive
adversary and Bender and Gilbert [BG11] can do O(log2 log n) amortized
expected RMRs against an oblivious adversary. Both bounds beat the deterministic lower bound. The adaptive-adversary bound is tight, due to a
matching lower bound of Giakkoupis and Woelfel [GW12b] that holds even
for systems that provide compare and swap objects. No non-trivial lower
bound is currently known for an oblivious adversary.

Chapter 18

The wait-free hierarchy

In a shared memory model, it may be possible to solve some problems using wait-free protocols, in which any process can finish the protocol in a
bounded number of steps, no matter what the other processes are doing (see
Chapter 26 for more on this and some variants).
The wait-free hierarchy hrm classifies asynchronous shared-memory object types T by consensus number, where a type T has consensus number
n if with objects of type T and atomic registers (all initialized to appropriate
values1 ) it is possible to solve wait-free consensus (i.e., agreement, validity,
wait-free termination) for n processes but not for n + 1 processes. The consensus number of any type is at least 1, since 1-process consensus requires
no interaction, and may range up to for particularly powerful objects.
The wait-free hierarchy was suggested by work by Maurice Herlihy [Her91b]
that classified many common (and some uncommon) shared-memory objects
by consensus number, and showed that an unbounded collection of objects
with consensus number n together with atomic registers gives a wait-free
implementation of any object in an n-process system. Various subsequent
authors noticed that this did not give a robust hierarchy in the sense that
combining two types of objects with consensus number n could solve waitfree consensus for larger n, and the hierarchy hrm was proposed by Prasad
1
The justification for assuming that the objects can be initialized to an arbitrary state
is a little tricky. The idea is that if we are trying to implement consensus from objects of
type T that are themselves implemented in terms of objects of type S, then its natural to
assume that we initialize our simulated type-T objects to whatever states are convenient.
Conversely, if we are using the ability of type-T objects to solve n-process consensus to
show that they cant be implemented from type-S objects (which cant solve n-process
consensus), then for both the type-T and type-S objects we want these claims to hold no
matter how they are initialized.

140

CHAPTER 18. THE WAIT-FREE HIERARCHY

141

Jayanti [Jay97] as a way of classifying objects that might be robust: an

object is at level n of the hrm hierarchy if having unboundedly many objects
plus unboundedly many registers solves n-process wait-free consensus but
not (n + 1)-process wait-free consensus.2
Whether or not the resulting hierarchy is in fact robust for arbitrary
deterministic objects is still open, but Eric Ruppert [Rup00] subsequently
showed that it is robust for RMW registers and objects with a read operation that returns the current state, and there is a paper by Borowsky, Gafni,
and Afek [BGA94] that sketches a proof based on a topological characterization of computability3 that hrm is robust for deterministic objects that dont
discriminate between processes (unlike, say, single-writer registers). So for
well-behaved shared-memory objects (deterministic, symmetrically accessible, with read operations, etc.), consensus number appears to give a real
classification that allows us to say for example that any collection of readwrite registers (consensus number 1), fetch-and-increments (2), test-and-set
bits (2), and queues (2) is not enough to build a compare-and-swap ().
We wont attempt to do the full robustness proofs of Borowsky et al. [BGA94]
or Ruppert [Rup00] that let us get away with this. Instead, well concentrate on Herlihys original results and show that specific objects have specific
consensus numbers when used in isolation. The procedure in each case will
be to show an upper bound on the consensus number using a variant of
Fischer-Lynch-Paterson (made easier because we are wait-free and dont
have to worry about fairness) and then show a matching lower bound (for
non-trivial upper bounds) by exhibiting an n-process consensus protocol for
some n. Essentially everything below is taken from Herlihys paper [Her91b],
so reading that may make more sense than reading these notes.

18.1

Classification by consensus number

Here we show the position of various types in the wait-free hierarchy. The
quick description is shown in Table 18.1; more details (mostly adapted
from [Her91b]) are given below.
The r in hrm stands for the registers, the m for having many objects of the given type.
Jayanti [Jay97] also defines a hierarchy hr1 where you only get finitely many objects. The
h stands for hierarchy, or, more specifically, h(T ) stands for the level of the hierarchy
at which T appears [Jay11].
3
See Chapter 28.
2

CHAPTER 18. THE WAIT-FREE HIERARCHY

Consensus
number

Defining
characteristic

Examples

Read
with
interfering
no-return
RMW.
Interfering
RMW; queuelike structures.

Registers, counters,
generalized counters,
atomic snapshots.

m
2m 2

First
writelike operation
wins.

142

max registers,

Test-and-set,
fetch-and-write,
fetch-and-add,
queues,
process-to-memory swap.
m-process consensus objects.
Atomic m-register write.
Queue with peek, fetch-and-cons,
sticky
bits,
compare-and-swap,
memory-to-memory swap, memoryto-memory copy.

Table 18.1: Position of various types in the wait-free hierarchy

18.1.1

Level 1: atomic registers, counters, other interfering

RMW registers that dont return the old value

First observe that any type has consensus number at least 1, since 1-process
consensus is trivial.
Well argue that a large class of particularly weak objects has consensus
number exactly 1, by running FLP with 2 processes. Recall from Chapter 9 that in the Fischer-Lynch-Paterson [FLP85] proof we classify states
as bivalent or univalent depending on whether both decision values are still
possible, and that with at least one failure we can always start in a bivalent
state (this doesnt depend on what objects we are using, since it depends
only on having invisible inputs). Since the system is wait-free there is no
constraint on adversary scheduling, and so if any bivalent state has a bivalent successor we can just do it. So to solve consensus we have to reach a
bivalent configuration C that has only univalent successors, and in particular has a 0-valent and a 1-valent successor produced by applying operations
x and y of processes px and py .
Assuming objects dont interact with each other behind the scenes, x
and y must be operations of the same object. Otherwise Cxy = Cyx and
we get a contradiction.
Now lets suppose we are looking at atomic registers, and consider cases:

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143

x and y are both reads, Then x and y commute: Cxy = Cyx, and we
get a contradiction.
x is a read and y is a write. Then py cant tell the difference between
Cyx and Cxy, so running py to completion gives the same decision
value from both Cyx and Cxy, another contradiction.
x and y are both writes. Now py cant tell the difference between Cxy
and Cy, so we get the same decision value for both, again contradicting
that Cx is 0-valent and Cy is 1-valent.
Theres a pattern to these cases that generalizes to other objects. Suppose that an object has a read operation that returns its state and one or
more read-modify-write operations that dont return anything (perhaps we
could call them modify-write operations). Well say that the MW operations are interfering if, for any two operations x and y, either:
x and y commute: Cxy = Cyx.
One of x and y overwrites the other: Cxy = Cy or Cyx = Cx.
Then no pair of read or modify-write operations can get us out of a
bivalent state, because (a) reads commute; (b) for a read and MW, the nonreader cant tell which operation happened first; (c) and for any two MW
operations, either they commute or the overwriter cant detect that the first
operation happened. So any MW object with uninformative, interfering
MW operations has consensus number 1.
For example, consider a counter that supports operations read, increment, decrement, and write: a write overwrites any other operation, and
increments and decrements commute with each other, so the counter has
consensus number 1. The same applies to a generalized counter that supports an atomic x x + a operation; as long as this operation doesnt
return the old value, it still commutes with other atomic increments. Max
registers (reads on which return the largest value previously written) also
have commutative updates, so they also have consensus number 1.

18.1.2

Level 2: interfering RMW objects that return the old

value, queues (without peek)

Suppose now that we have a RMW object that returns the old value, and
suppose that it is non-trivial in the sense that it has at least one RMW
operation where the embedded function f that determines the new value is

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144

not the identity (otherwise RMW is just read). Then there is some value v
such that f (v) 6= v. To solve two-process consensus, have each process pi first
write its preferred value to a register ri , then execute the non-trivial RMW
operation on the RMW object initialized to v. The first process to execute
its operation sees v and decides its own value. The second process sees f (v)
and decides the first processs value (which it reads from the register). It
follows that non-trivial RMW object has consensus number at least 2.
In many cases, this is all we get. Suppose that the operations of some
RMW type T are non-interfering in a way analogous to the previous definition, where now we say that x and y commute if they leave the object in the
same state (regardless of what values are returned) and that y overwrites x
if the object is always in the same state after both x and xy (again regardless of what is returned). The two processes px and py that carry out x and
y know what happenened, but a third process pz doesnt. So if we run pz
to completion we get the same decision value after both Cx and Cy, which
means that Cx and Cy cant be 0-valent and 1-valent. It follows that no
collection of RMW registers with interfering operations can solve 3-process
consensus, and thus all such objects have consensus number 2. Examples
of these objects include test-and-set bits, fetch-and-add registers, and
swap registers that support an operation swap that writes a new value and
return the previous value.
There are some other objects with consensus number 2 that dont fit this
pattern. Define a wait-free queue as an object with enqueue and dequeue
operations (like normal queues), where dequeue returns if the queue is
empty (instead of blocking). To solve 2-process consensus with a wait-free
queue, initialize the queue with a single value (it doesnt matter what the
value is). We can then treat the queue as a non-trivial RMW register where
a process wins if it successfully dequeues the initial value and loses if it gets
empty.
However, enqueue operations are non-interfering: if px enqueues vx and
py enqueues vy , then any third process can detect which happened first;
similarly we can distinguish enq(x)deq() from deq()enq(x). So to show we
cant do three process consensus we do something sneakier: given a bivalent
state C with allegedly 0- and 1-valent successors Cenq(x) and Cenq(y),
consider both Cenq(x)enq(y) and Cenq(y)enq(x) and run px until it does
a deq() (which it must, because otherwise it cant tell what to decide) and
then stop it. Now run py until it also does a deq() and then stop it. Weve
now destroyed the evidence of the split and poor hapless pz is stuck. In the
case of Cdeq()enq(x) and Cenq(x)deq() on a non-empty queue we can kill
the initial dequeuer immediately and then kill whoever dequeues x or the

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145

value it replaced, and if the queue is empty only the dequeuer knows. In
either case we reach indistinguishable states after killing only 2 witnesses,
and the queue has consensus number at most 2.
Similar arguments work on stacks, deques, and so forththese all have
consensus number exactly 2.

18.1.3

Level : objects where first write wins

These are objects that can solve consensus for any number of processes.
Here are a bunch of level- objects:
Queue with peek Has operations enq(x) and peek(), which returns the
first value enqueued. (Maybe also deq(), but we dont need it for
consensus). Protocol is to enqueue my input and then peek and return
the first value in the queue.
Fetch-and-cons Returns old cdr and adds new car on to the head of a list.
Use preceding protocol where peek() = tail(car :: cdr).
Sticky bit Has a write operation that has no effect unless register is in
the initial state. Whether the write succeeds or fails, it returns
nothing. The consensus protocol is to write my input and then return
result of a read.
Compare-and-swap Has CAS(old, new) operation that writes new only if
previous value is old. Use it to build a sticky bit.
Load-linked/store-conditional Like compare-and-swap split into two operations. The operation reads a memory location and marks it. The
operation succeeds only if the location has not been changed since the
preceding load-linked by the same process. Can be used to build a
sticky bit.
Memory-to-memory swap Has swap(ri , rj ) operation that atomically swaps
contents of ri with rj , as well as the usual read and write operations
for all registers. Use to implement fetch-and-cons. Alternatively, use
two registers input[i] and victory[i] for each process i, where victory[i]
is initialized to 0, and a single central register prize, initialized to 1.
To execute consensus, write your input to input[i], then swap victory[i]
with prize. The winning value is obtained by scanning all the victory
registers for the one that contains a 1, then returning the corresponding input value.)

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Memory-to-memory copy Has a copy(ri , rj ) operation that copies ri to

rj atomically. Use the same trick as for memory-to-memory swap,
where a process copies prize to victory[i]. But now we have a process
follow up by writing 0 to prize. As soon as this happens, the victory
values are now fixed; take the leftmost 1 as the winner.4
Herlihy [Her91b] gives a slightly more complicated version of this procedure, where there is a separate prize[i] register for each i, and after
doing its copy a process writes 0 to all of the prize registers. This
shows that memory-to-memory copy solves consensus for arbitrarily
many processes even if we insist that copy operations can never overlap. The same trick also works for memory-to-memory swap, since we
can treat a memory-to-memory swap as a memory-to-memory copy
given that we dont care what value it puts in the prize[i] register.

18.1.4

Level 2m 2: simultaneous m-register write

Here we have a (large) collection of atomic registers augmented by an mregister write operation that performs all the writes simultaneously. The
intuition for why this is helpful is that if p1 writes r1 and rshared while p2
writes r2 and rshared then any process can look at the state of r1 , r2 and
rshared and tell which write happened first. Code for this procedure is given
in Algorithm 18.1; note that up to 4 reads may be necessary to determine
the winner because of timing issues.
The workings of Algorithm 18.1 are straightforward:
If the process reads r1 = r2 = , then we dont care which went first,
because the reader (or somebody else) already won.
If the process reads r1 = 1 and then r2 = , then p1 went first.
If the process reads r2 = 2 and then r1 = , then p2 went first. (This
requires at least one more read after checking the first case.)
Otherwise the process saw r1 = 1 and r2 = 2. Now read rshared : if its
1, p2 went first; if its 2, p1 went first.
Algorithm 18.1 requires 2-register writes, and will give us a protocol for 2
processes (since the reader above has to participate somewhere to make the
first case work). For m processes, we can do the same thing with m-register
writes. We have a register rpq = rqp for each pair of distinct processes p
4

Or use any other rule that all processes apply consistently.

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1
2
3
4
5

7
8

10
11
12
13

v1 r1
v2 r2
if v1 = v2 = then
return no winner
if v1 = 1 and v2 = then
// p1 went first
return 1
// read r1 again
v10 r1
if v2 = 2 and v10 = then
// p2 went first
return 2
// both p1 and p2 wrote
if rshared = 1 then
return 2
else
return 1

Algorithm 18.1: Determining the winner of a race between 2-register

writes. The assumption is that p1 and p2 each wrote their own ids to ri
and rshared simultaneously. This code can be executed by any process
(including but not limited to p1 or p2 ) to determine which of these
2-register writes happened first.

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2
and q, plus a register rpp for each p; this gives a total of m
2 + m = O(m )
registers. All registers are initialized to . Process p then writes its initial
preference to some single-writer register pref p and then simultaneously writes
p to rpq for all q (including rpp ). It then attempts to figure out the first writer
by applying the above test for each q to rpq (standing in for rshared ), rpp (r1 )
and rqq (r2 ). If it won against all the other processes, it decides its own
value. If not, it repeats the test recursively for some p0 that beat it until
it finds a process that beat everybody, and returns its value. So m-register
writes solve m-process wait-free consensus.
A further tweak gets 2m2: run two copies of an (m1)process protocol
using separate arrays of registers to decide a winner for each group. Then
add a second phase where each process has one register sp , in which each
process p from group 1 writes the winning id for its group simultaneously
into sp and sq for each q in the other group. To figure out who won in the
end, build a graph of all victories, where there is an edge from p to q if
and only if p beat q in phase 1 or ps id was written before qs id in phase
2. The winner is the (unique) process with at least one outgoing edge and
no incoming edges, which will be the process that won its own group (by
writing first) and whose value was written first in phase 2.

18.1.4.1

Matching impossibility result

It might seem that the technique used to boost from m-process consensus to
(2m 2)-process consensus could be repeated to get up to at least (m2 ),
but this turns out not to be the case. The essential idea is to show that in
order to escape bivalence, we have to get to a configuration C where every
process is about to do an m-register write leading to a univalent configuration (since reads dont help for the usual reasons, and normal writes can be
simulated by m-register writes with an extra m 1 dummy registers), and
then argue that these writes cant overlap too much. So suppose we are in
such a configuration, and suppose that Cx is 0-valent and Cy is 1-valent, and
we also have many other operations z1 . . . zk that lead to univalent states.
Following Herlihy [Her91b], we argue in two steps:
1. There is some register that is written to by x alone out of all the
pending operations. Proof: Suppose not. Then the 0-valent configuration Cxyz1 . . . zk is indistinguishable from the 1-valent configuration
Cyz1 . . . zk by any process except px , and were in trouble.
2. There is some register that is written to by x and y but not by any of
the zi . Proof:: Suppose not. The each register is written by at most

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one of x and y, making it useless for telling which went first; or it is

overwritten by some zi , hiding the value that tells which went first.
So Cxyz1 . . . zk is indistinguishable from Cyxz1 . . . zk for any process
other than px and py , and were still in trouble.
Now suppose we have 2m 1 processes. The first part says that each of
the pending operations (x, y, all of the zi ) writes to 1 single-writer register
and at least k two-writer registers where k is the number of processes leading
to a different univalent value. This gives k + 1 total registers simultaneously
written by this operation. Now observe that with 2m 1 process, there is
some set of m processes whose operations all lead to a b-valent state; so
for any process to get to a (b)-valent state, it must write m + 1 registers
simultaneously. It follows that with only m simultaneous writes we can only
do (2m 2)-consensus.

18.1.5

Level m: m-process consensus objects

An m-process consensus object has a single consensus operation that, the

first m times it is called, returns the input value in the first operation, and
thereafter returns only . Clearly this solves m-process consensus. To show
that it doesnt solve (m + 1)-process consensus even when augmented with
registers, run a bivalent initial configuration to a configuration C where any
further operation yields a univalent state. By an argument similar to the mregister write case, we can show that the pending operations in C must all be
consensus operations on the same consensus object (anything else commutes
or overwrites). Now run Cxyz1 . . . zk and Cyxz1 . . . zk , where x and y lead
to 0-valent and 1-valent states, and observe that pk cant distinguish the
resulting configurations because all it got was . (Note: this works even if
the consensus object isnt in its initial state, since we know that before x or
y the configuration is still bivalent.)
So the m-process consensus object has consensus number m. This shows
that hrm is nonempty at each level.
A natural question at this point is whether the inability of m-process
consensus objects to solve (m + 1)-process consensus implies robustness of
the hierarchy. One might consider the following argument: given any object
at level m, we can simulate it with an m-process consensus object, and
since we cant combine m-process consensus objects to boost the consensus
number, we cant combine any objects they can simulate either. The problem
here is that while m-process consensus objects can simulate any object in a
system with m processes (see below), it may be that some objects can do

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more in a system with m + 1 objects while still not solving (m + 1)-process

consensus. A simple way to see this would be to imagine a variant of the mprocess consensus object that doesnt fail completely after m operations; for
example, it might return one of the first two inputs given to it instead of .
This doesnt help with solving consensus, but it might (or might not) make
it too powerful to implement using standard m-process consensus objects.

18.2

Universality of consensus

Universality of consensus says that any type that can implement nprocess consensus can, together with atomic registers, give a wait-free implementation of any object in a system with n processes. That consensus
is universal was shown by Herlihy [Her91b] and Plotkin [Plo89]. Both of
these papers spend a lot of effort on making sure that both the cost of each
operation and the amount of space used is bounded. But if we ignore these
constraints, the same result can be shown using a mechanism similar to the
replicated state machines of 10.1.
Here the processes repeatedly use consensus to decide between candidate
histories of the simulated object, and a process successfully completes an
operation when its operation (tagged to distinguish it from other similar
operations) appears in a winning history. A round structure avoids too
much confusion.
Details are given in Algorithm 18.2.
There are some subtleties to this algorithm. The first time that a process
calls consensus (on c[r]), it may supply a dummy input; the idea is that it
is only using the consensus object to obtain the agreed-upon history from a
round it missed. Its safe to do this, because no process writes r to its round
register until c[r] is complete, so the dummy input cant be accidentally
chosen as the correct value.
Its not hard to see that whatever hr+1 is chosen in c[r+1] is an extension
of hr (it is constructed by appending operations to hr ), and that all processes
agree on it (by the agreement property of the consensus object c[r + 1]. So
this gives us an increasing sequence of consistent histories. We also need
to show that these histories are linearizable. The obvious linearization is
just the most recent version of hr . Suppose some call to apply(1 ) finishes
before a call to apply(2 ) starts. Then 1 is contained in some hr when
apply(1 ) finishes, and since 2 can only enter h by being appended at the
end, we get 1 linearized before 2 .
Finally, we need to show termination. The algorithm is written with a

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2
3

5
6
7
8

9
10
11
12
13
14

procedure apply()
// announce my intended operation
op[i]
while true do
// find a recent round
r maxj round[j]
// obtain the history as of that round
if hr = then
hr consensus(c[r], )
if hr then
return value returns in hr
// else attempt to advance
h0 hr
for each j do
if op[j] 6 h0 then
append op[j] to h0
hr+1 consensus(c[r + 1], h0 )
round[i] r + 1
Algorithm 18.2: A universal construction based on consensus

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loop, so in principle it could run forever. But we can argue that no process
after executes the loop more than twice. The reason is that a process p puts
its operation in op[p] before it calculates r; so any process that writes r0 > r
to round sees ps operation before the next round. It follows that ps value
gets included in the history no later than round r + 2. (Well see this sort
of thing again when we do atomic snapshots in Chapter 19.)
Building a consistent shared history is easier with some particular objects
that solve consensus. For example, a fetch-and-cons object that supplies
an operation that pushes a new head onto a linked list and returns the old
head trivially implements the common history above without the need for
helping. One way to implement fetch-and-cons is with a swap object; to
add a new element to the list, create a cell with its next pointer pointing to
itself, then swap the next field with the head pointer for the entire list.
The solutions weve described here have a number of deficiencies that
make them impractical in a real system (even more so than many of the
algorithms weve described). If we store entire histories in a register, the
register will need to be very, very wide. If we store entire histories as a linked
list, it will take an unbounded amount of time to read the list. For solutions
to these problems, see [AW04, 15.3] or the papers of Herlihy [Her91b] and
Plotkin [Plo89].

Chapter 19

Atomic snapshots
Weve seen in the previous chapter that there are a lot of things we cant
make wait-free with just registers. But there are a lot of things we can.
Atomic snapshots are a tool that let us do a lot of these things easily.
An atomic snapshot object acts like a collection of n single-writer
multi-reader atomic registers with a special snapshot operation that returns
(what appears to be) the state of all n registers at the same time. This is
easy without failures: we simply lock the whole register file, read them all,
and unlock them to let all the starving writers in. But it gets harder if
we want a protocol that is wait-free, where any process can finish its own
snapshot or write even if all the others lock up.
Well give the usual sketchy description of a couple of snapshot algorithms. More details on early snapshot results can be found in [AW04,
10.3] or [Lyn96, 13.3]. There is also a reasonably recent survey by Fich
on upper and lower bounds for the problem [Fic05].

19.1

The basic trick: two identical collects equals

a snapshot

Lets tag any value written with a sequence number, so that each value
written has a seqno field attached to it that increases over time. We can
now detect if a new write has occurred between two reads of the same
variable. Suppose now that we repeatedly perform collectsreads of all
n registersuntil two successive collects return exactly the same vector of
values and sequence numbers. We can then conclude that precisely these
values were present in the registers at some time in between the two collects.
This gives us a very simple algorithm for snapshot. Unfortunately, it doesnt
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terminate if there are a lot of writers around.1 So we need some way to slow
the writers down, or at least get them to do snapshots for us.

19.2

The Gang of Six algorithm

This is the approach taken by Afek and his five illustrious co-authors [AAD+ 93]
(see also [AW04, 10.3] or [Lyn96, 13.3.2]): before a process can write to
its register, it first has to complete a snapshot and leave the results behind
with its write.2 This means that if some slow process (including a slow
writer, since now writers need to do snapshots too) is prevented from doing
the two-collect snapshot because too much writing is going on, eventually
it can just grab and return some pre-packaged snapshot gathered by one of
the many successful writers.
Specifically, if a process executing a single snapshot operation sees
values written by a single process i with three different sequence numbers
s1 , s2 and s3 , then it can be assured that the snapshot 3 gathered with
sequence number s3 started no earlier than s2 was written (and thus no
earlier than started, since read s1 after it started) and ended no later
than ended (because saw it). It follows that the snapshot can safely
return 3 , since that represents the value of the registers at some time inside
3 s interval, which is contained completely within s interval.
So a snapshot repeatedly does collects until either (a) it gets two identical
collects, in which case it can return the results (a direct scan, or (b) it sees
three different values from the same process, in which case it can take the
snapshot collected by the second write (an indirect scan). See pseudocode
in Algorithm 19.1.
Amazingly, despite the fact that updates keep coming and everybody is
trying to do snapshots all the time, a snapshot operation of a single process
is guaranteed to terminate after at most n + 1 collects. The reason is that
1

This isnt always a problem, since there may be external factors that keep the writers
from showing up too much. Maurice Herlihy and I got away with using exactly this
snapshot algorithm in an ancient, pre-snapshot paper on randomized consensus [AH90a].
2
The algorithm is usually called the AADGMS algorithm by people who can remember
all the namesor at least the initialsof the team of superheroes who came up with it
(Afek, Attiya, Dolev, Gafni, Merritt, and Shavit) and Gang of Six by people who cant.
Historically, this was one of three independent solutions to the problem that appeared at
about the same time; a similar algorithm for composite registers was given by James
Anderson [And94] and a somewhat different algorithm for consistent scan was given
by Aspnes and Herlihy [AH90b]. The Afek et al. algorithm had the advantage of using
bounded registers (in its full version), and so it and its name for atomic snapshot prevailed
over its competitors.

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in order to prevent case (a) from holding, the adversary has to supply at
least one new value in each collect after the first. But it can only supply one
new value for each of the n 1 processes that arent doing collects before
case (b) is triggered (its triggered by the first process that shows up with
a second new value). Adding up all the collects gives 1 + (n 1) + 1 =
n + 1 collects before one of the cases holds. Since each collect takes n 1
read operations (assuming the process is smart enough not to read its own
register), a snapshot operation terminates after at most n2 1 reads.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

9
10

procedure updatei (A, v)

s scan(A)
A[i] hA[i].count + 1, v, si
procedure scan(A)
initial collect(A)
previous initial while true do
s scan(A)
if s = previous then
// Two identical collects
return s
else if j : s[j].count initial[j].count + 2 do
// Three different counts from j
return s[j].snapshot

else
// Nothing useful, try again
previous s

Algorithm 19.1: Snapshot of [AAD+ 93] using unbounded registers

For a write operation, a process first performs a snapshot, then writes
the new value, the new sequence number, and the result of the snapshot
to its register (these are very wide registers). The total cost is n2 1 read
operations for the snapshot plus 1 write operation.

19.2.1

Linearizability

We now need to argue that the snapshot vectors returned by the Afek et al.
algorithm really work, that is, that between each matching invoke-snapshot
and respond-snapshot there was some actual time where the registers in
the array contained precisely the values returned in the respond-snapshot

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action. We do so by assigning a linearization point to each snapshot vector, a time at which it appears in the registers (which for correctness of the
protocol had better lie within the interval between the snapshot invocation
and response). For snapshots obtained through case (a), take any time between the two collects. For snapshots obtained through case (b), take the
serialization point already assigned to the snapshot vector provided by the
third write. In the latter case we argue by induction on termination times
that the linearization point lies inside the snapshots interval.
Note that this means that all snapshots were ultimately collected by two
successive collects returning identical values, since any case-(b) snapshot
sits on top of a finite regression of case-(b) snapshots that must end with
a case-(a) snapshot. In practice what this means is that if there are many
writers, eventually all of them will stall waiting for a case-(a) snapshot to
complete, which happens because all the writers are stuck. So effectively
the process of requiring writers to do snapshots first almost gives us a form
of locking, but without the vulnerability to failures of a real lock. (In fact,
crash failures just mean that there are fewer writers to screw things up,
allowing snapshots to finish faster.)

19.2.2

Using bounded registers

The simple version of the Afek et al. algorithm requires unbounded registers
(since sequence numbers may grow forever). One of the reasons why this
algorithm required so many smart people was to get rid of this assumption:
the paper describes a (rather elaborate) mechanism for recycling sequence
numbers that prevents unbounded growth (see also [Lyn96, 13.3.3]). In
practice, unbounded registers are probably not really an issue once one has
accepted very large registers, but getting rid of them is an interesting theoretical problem.
It turns out that with a little cleverness we can drop the sequence numbers entirely. The idea is that we just need a mechanism to detect when
somebody has done a lot of writes while a snapshot is in progress. A naive
approach would be to have sequence numbers wrap around mod m for some
small constant modulus m; this fails because if enough snapshots happen
between two of my collects, I may notice none of them because all the sequence numbers wrapped around all the way. But we can augment mod-m
sequence numbers with a second handshaking mechanism that detects when
a large enough number of snapshots have occurred; this acts like the guard
bit on an automobile odometer, than signals when the odometer has overflowed to prevent odometer fraud by just running the odometer forward an

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extra million miles or so.

The result is the full version of Afek et al. [AAD+ 93]. (Our presentation
here follows [AW04, 10.3].) The key mechanism for detecting odometer fraud
is a handshake, a pair of single-writer bits used by two processes to signal
each other that they have done something. Call the processes S (for same)
and D (for different), and supposed we have handshake bits hS and hD . We
then provide operations tryHandshake (signal that something is happening)
and checkHandshake (check if something happened) for each process; these
operations are asymmetric. The code is:
tryHandshake(S): hS hD (make the two bits the same)
tryHandshake(D): hD hS (make the two bits different)
checkHandshake(S): return hS 6= hD (return true if D changed its bit)
checkHandshake(D): return hS = hD (return true if S changed its bit)
The intent is that checkHandshake returns true if the other process
called tryHandshake after I did. The situation is a bit messy, however,
since tryHandshake involves two register operations (reading the other bit
and then writing my own). So in fact we have to look at the ordering of
these read and write events. Lets assume that checkHandshake is called
by S (so it returns true if and only if it sees different values). Then we have
two cases:
1. checkHandshake(S) returns true. Then S reads a different value in
hD from the value it read during its previous call to tryHandshake(S).
It follows that D executed a write as part of a tryHandshake(D)
operation in between Ss previous read and its current read.
2. checkHandshake(S) returns false. Then S reads the same value in hD
as it read previously. This does not necessarily mean that D didnt
write hD during this intervalit is possible that D is just very out
of date, and did a write that didnt change the register valuebut it
does mean that D didnt perform both a read and a write since Ss
previous read.
How do we use this in a snapshot algorithm? The idea is that before
performing my two collects, I will execute tryHandshake on my end of a
pair of handshake bits for every other process. After performing my two
collects, Ill execute checkHandshake. I will also assume each update (after

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158

performing a snapshot) toggles a mod-2 sequence number bit on the value

stored in its segment of the snapshot array. The hope is that between the
toggle and the handshake, I detect any changes. (See [AW04, Algorithm 30]
for the actual code.)
Does this work? Lets look at cases:
1. The toggle bit for some process q is unchanged between the two snapshots taken by p. Since the bit is toggled with each update, this means
that an even number of updates to q 0 s segment occurred during the
interval between ps writes. If this even number is 0, we are happy: no
updates means no call to tryHandshake by q, which means we dont
see any change in qs segment, which is good, because there wasnt
any. If this even number is 2 or more, then we observe that each of
these events precedes the following one:
ps call to tryHandshake.
ps first read.
qs first write.
qs call to tryHandshake at the start of its second scan.
qs second write.
ps second read.
ps call to checkHandshake.
It follows that q both reads and writes the handshake bits in between
ps calls to tryHandshake and checkHandshake, so p correctly sees
that q has updated its segment.
2. The toggle bit for q has changed. Then q did an odd number of updates
(i.e., at least one), and p correctly detects this fact.
What does p do with this information? Each time it sees that q has done
a scan, it updates a count for q. If the count reaches 3, then p can determine
that qs last scanned value is from a scan that is contained completely within
the time interval of ps scan. Either this is a direct scan, where q actually
performs two collects with no changes between them, or its an indirect
scan, where q got its value from some other scan completely contained
within qs scan. In the first case p is immediately happy; in the second,
we observe that this other scan is also contained within the interval of ps
scan, and so (after chasing down a chain of at most n 1 indirect scans) we
eventually reach a direct scan contained within it that provided the actual

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value. In either case p returns the value of pair of adjacent collects with
no changes between them that occurred during the execution of its scan
operation, which gives us linearizability.

19.3

Faster snapshots using lattice agreement

The Afek et al. algorithm and its contemporaries all require O(n2 ) operations for each snapshot. It is possible to get this bound down to O(n) using
a more clever algorithm, [IMCT94] which is the best we can reasonably hope
for in the worst case given that (a) even a collect (which doesnt guarantee
anything about linearizability) requires (n) operations when implemented
in the obvious way, and (b) there is a linear lower bound, due to Jayanti,
Tan, and Toueg [JTT00], on a large class of wait-free objects that includes
snapshot.3
The first step, due to Attiya, Herlihy, and Rachman [AHR95], is a reduction to a related problem called lattice agreement.

19.3.1

Lattice agreement

A lattice is a partial order in which every pair of elements x, y has a least

upper bound x y called the join of x and y and a greatest lower bound
x y called the meet of x and y. For example, we can make a lattice out
of sets by letting join be union and meet be intersection; or we can make a
lattice out of integers by making join be max and meet be min.
In the lattice agreement problem, each process starts with an input xi
and produces an output yi , where both are elements of some lattice. The
requirements of the problem are:
Comparability For all i, j, yi yj or yj yi .
Downward validity For all i, xi yi .
Upward validity For all i, yi x1 x2 x3 . . . xn .
These requirements are analogous to the requirements for consensus.
Comparability acts like agreement: the views returned by the lattice-agreement
protocol are totally ordered. Downward validity says that each process will
include its own input in its output. Upward validity acts like validity: an
output cant include anything that didnt show up in some input.
3

But see 21.5 for a faster alternative if we allow either randomization or limits on the
number of times the array is updated.

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For the snapshot algorithm, we also demand wait-freedom: each process terminates after a bounded number of its own steps, even if other processes fail.
Note that if we are really picky, we can observe that we dont actually
need meets; a semi-lattice that provides only joins is enough. In practice
we almost always end up with a full-blown lattice, because (a) we are working
with finite sets, and (b) we generally want to include a bottom element
that is less than all the other elements, to represent the empty state of
our data structure. But any finite join-semi-lattice with a bottom element
turns out to be a lattice, since we can define x y as the join of all elements
z such that z x and z y. We dont use the fact that we are in a lattice
anywhere, but it does save us two syllables not to have to say semi-lattice
agreement.

19.3.2

Connection to vector clocks

The first step in reducing snapshot to lattice agreement is to have each writer
generates a sequence of increasing timestamps r1 , r2 , . . . , and a snapshot
corresponds to some vector of timestamps [t1 , t2 . . . tn ], where ti indicates
the most recent write by pi that is included in the snapshot (in other words,
we are using vector clocks again; see 12.2.3). Now define v v 0 if vi vi0
for all i; the resulting partial order is a lattice, and in particular we can
compute x y by the rule (x y)i = xi yi .
Suppose now that we have a bunch of snapshots that satisfy the comparability requirement; i.e., they are totally ordered. Then we can construct a
sequential execution by ordering the snapshots in increasing order with each
update operation placed before the first snapshot that includes it. This sequential execution is not necessarily a linearization of the original execution,
and a single lattice agreement object wont support more than one operation for each process, but the idea is that we can nonetheless use lattice
agreement objects to enforce comparability between concurrent executions
of snapshot, while doing some other tricks (exploiting, among other things,
the validity properties of the lattice agreement objects) to get linearizability
over the full execution.

19.3.3

The full reduction

The Attiya-Herlihy-Rachman algorithm is given as Algorithm 19.2. It uses

an array of registers Ri to hold round numbers (timestamps); an array Si
to hold values to scan; an unboundedly humongous array Vir to hold views

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obtained by each process in some round; and a collection of lattice-agreement

objects LAr , one for each round.
1

2
3
4
5

6
7
8

9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

procedure scan()
// First attempt
Ri r max(R1 . . . Rn , Ri + 1)
collect read(S1 . . . Sn )
view LAr (collect)
if max(R1 . . . Rn ) > Ri then
// Fall through to second attempt
else
Vir view
return Vir
// Second attempt
Ri r max(R1 . . . Rn , Ri + 1)
collect read(S1 . . . Sn )
view LAr (collect)
if max(R1 . . . Rn ) > Ri then
Vir some nonempty Vjr
return Vir
else
Vir view
returnVir
Algorithm 19.2: Lattice agreement snapshot

The algorithm makes two attempts to obtain a snapshot. In both cases,

the algorithm advances to the most recent round it sees (or its previous round
plus one, if nobody else has reached this round yet), attempts a collect, and
then runs lattice-agreement to try to get a consistent view. If after getting
its first view it finds that some other process has already advanced to a
later round, it makes a second attempt at a new, higher round r0 and uses
some view that it obtains in this second round, either directly from lattice
agreement, or (if it discovers that it has again fallen behind), it uses an
indirect view from some speedier process.
The reason why I throw away my view if I find out you have advanced
to a later round is not because the view is bad for me but because its bad
for you: I might have included some late values in my view that you didnt
see, breaking consistency between rounds. But I dont have to do this more

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than once; if the same thing happens on my second attempt, I can use an
indirect view as in [AAD+ 93], knowing that it is safe to do so because any
collect that went into this indirect view started after I did.
The update operation is the usual update-and-scan procedure; for completeness this is given as Algorithm 19.3. To make it easier to reason about
the algorithm, we assume that an update returns the result of the embedded
scan.
1
2
3

procedure updatei (v)

Si (Si .seqno + 1, v)
return scan()
Algorithm 19.3: Update for lattice agreement snapshot

19.3.4

Why this works

We need to show three facts:

1. All views returned by the scan operation are comparable; that is, there
exists a total order on the set of views (which can be extended to a
total order on scan operations by breaking ties using the execution
order).
2. The view returned by an update operation includes the update (this
implies that future views will also include the update, giving the correct behavior for snapshot).
3. The total order on views respects the execution order: if 1 and 2 are
scan operations that return v1 and v2 , then scan1 <S scan2 implies
view1 view2 . (This gives us linearization.)
Lets start with comparability. First observe that any view returned is
either a direct view (obtained from LAr ) or an indirect view (obtained from
Vjr for some other process j). In the latter case, following the chain of
indirect views eventually reaches some direct view. So all views returned for
a given round are ultimately outputs of LAr and thus satisfy comparability.
But what happens with views from different rounds? The lattice-agreement
objects only operate within each round, so we need to ensure that any view
returned in round r is included in any subsequent rounds. This is where
checking round numbers after calling LAr comes in.

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Suppose some process i returns a direct view; that is, it sees no higher
round number in either its first attempt or its second attempt. Then at
the time it starts checking the round number in Line 5 or 12, no process
has yet written a round number higher than the round number of is view
(otherwise i would have seen it). So no process with a higher round number
has yet executed the corresponding collect operation. When such a process
does so, it obtains values that are at least as current as those fed into LAr ,
and is round-r view is less than or equal to the vector of these values by
upward validity of LAr and thus less than or equal to the vector of values
returned by LAr0 for r0 > r by upward validity. So we have comparability
of all direct views, which implies comparability of all indirect views as well.
To show that each view returned by scan includes the preceding update,
we observe that either a process returns its first-try scan (which includes
the update by downward validity) or it returns the results of a scan in the
second-try round (which includes the update by downward validity in the
later round, since any collect in the second-try round starts after the update
occurs). So no updates are missed.
Now lets consider two scan operations 1 and 2 where 1 precedes 2
in the execution. We want to show that, for the views v1 and v2 that these
scans return, v1 v2 . From the comparability property, the only way this
can fail is if v2 < v1 ; that is, there is some update included in v2 that is
not included in v1 . But this cant happen; if 2 starts after 1 finishes, it
starts after any update 1 sees is already in one of the Sj registers, and so
2 will include this update in its initial collect. (Slightly more formally, if s
is the contents of the registers at some time between when 1 finishes and
2 starts, then v1 s by upward validity and s v2 by downward validity
of the appropriate LA objects.)

19.3.5

Implementing lattice agreement

There are several known algorithms for implementing lattice agreement, including the original algorithm of Attiya, Herlihy, and Rachman [AHR95] and
an adaptive algorithm of Attiya and Fouren [AF01]. The best of them (assuming multi-writer registers) is Inoue et al.s linear-time lattice agreement
protocol [IMCT94].
The intuition behind this protocol is to implement lattice agreement
using divide-and-conquer. The processes are organized into a tree, with
each leaf in the tree corresponding to some processs input. Internal nodes
of the tree hold data structures that will report increasingly large subsets
of the inputs under them as they become available. At each internal node,

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a double-collect snapshot is used to ensure that the value stored at that

node is always the union of two values that appear in its children at the
same time. This is used to guarantee that, so long as each child stores an
increasing sequence of sets of inputs, the parent does so also.
Each process ascends the tree updating nodes as it goes to ensure that
its value is included in the final result. A rather clever data structure is
used to ensure that out-of-date smaller sets dont overwrite larger ones at
any node, and the cost of using this data structure and carrying out the
double-collect snapshot at a node with m leaves below it is shown to be
O(m). So the total cost of a snapshot is O(n + n/2 + n/4 + . . . 1) = O(n),
giving the linear time bound.
Lets now look at the details of this protocol. There are two main components: the Union algorithm used to compute a new value for each node
of the tree, and the ReadSet and WriteSet operations used to store the
data in the node. These are both rather specialized algorithms and depend
on the details of the other, so it is not trivial to describe them in isolation
from each other; but with a little effort we can describe exactly what each
component demands from the other, and show that it gets it.
The Union algorithm does the usual two-collects-without change trick to
get the values of the children and then stores the result. In slightly more
detail:
1. Perform ReadSet on both children. This returns a set of leaf values.
2. Perform ReadSet on both children again.
3. If the values obtained are the same in both collects, call WriteSet on
the current node to store the union of the two sets and proceed to the
parent node. Otherwise repeat the preceding step.
The requirement of the Union algorithm is that calling ReadSet on a
given node returns a non-decreasing sequence of sets of values; that is, if
ReadSet returns some set S at a particular time and later returns S 0 , then
S S 0 . We also require that the set returned by ReadSet is a superset
of any set written by a WriteSet that precedes it, and that it is equal to
some such set. This last property only works if we guarantee that the values
stored by WriteSet are all comparable (which is shown by induction on the
behavior of Union at lower levels of the tree).
Suppose that all these conditions hold; we want to show that the values
written by successive calls to Union are all comparable, that is, for any
values S, S 0 written by union we have S S 0 or S 0 S. Observe that

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165

S = L R and S 0 = L0 R0 where L, R and L0 , R0 are sets read from

the children. Suppose that the Union operation producing S completes its
snapshot before the operation producing S 0 . Then L L0 (by the induction
hypothesis) and R R0 , giving S S 0 .
We now show how to implement the ReadSet and WriteSet operations.
The main thing we want to avoid is the possibility that some large set
gets overwritten by a smaller, older one. The solution is to have m registers
a[1 . . . m], and write a set of size s to every register in a[1 . . . s] (each register
gets a copy of the entire set). Because register a[s] gets only sets of size s or
larger, there is no possibility that our set is overwritten by a smaller one. If
we are clever about how we organize this, we can guarantee that the total
cost of all calls to ReadSet by a particular process is O(m), as is the cost of
the single call to WriteSet in Union.
Pseudocode for both is given as Algorithm 19.4. This is a simplified
version of the original algorithm from [IMCT94], which does the writes in
increasing order and thus forces readers to finish incomplete writes that they
observe, as in Attiya-Bar-Noy-Dolev [ABND95] (see also Chapter 16).
shared data: array a[1 . . . m] of sets, initially
local data: index p, initially 0
1
2
3

5
6
7
8
9
10
11

procedure WriteSet(S)
for i |S| down to 1 do
a[i] S
procedure ReadSet()
// update p to last nonempty position
while true do
s a[p]
if p = m or a[p + 1] = then
break
else
pp+1
return s
Algorithm 19.4: Increasing set data structure

Naively, one might think that we could just write directly to a[|S|] and
skip the previous ones, but this makes it harder for a reader to detect that

CHAPTER 19. ATOMIC SNAPSHOTS

166

a[|S|] is occupied. By writing all the previous registers, we make it easy to

tell if there is a set of size |S| or bigger in the sequence, and so a reader can
start at the beginning and scan forward until it reaches an empty register,
secure in the knowledge that no larger value has been written.4 Since we
want to guarantee that no reader every spends more that O(m) operations
on an array of m registers (even if it does multiple calls to ReadSet), we also
have it remember the last location read in each call to ReadSet and start
there again on its next call. For WriteSet, because we only call it once, we
dont have to be so clever, and can just have it write all |S| m registers.
We need to show linearizability. Well do so by assigning a specific linearization point to each high-level operation. Linearize each call to ReadSet
at the last time that it reads a[p]. Linearize each call to WriteSet(S) at the
first time at which a[|S|] = S and a[i] 6= for every i < |S| (in other words,
at the first time that some reader might be able to find and return S); if
there is no such time, linearize the call at the time at which it returns. Since
every linearization point is inside its calls interval, this gives a linearization
that is consistent with the actual execution. But we have to argue that it
is also consistent with a sequential execution, which means that we need
to show that every ReadSet operation returns the largest set among those
whose corresponding WriteSet operations are linearized earlier.
Let R be a call to ReadSet and W a call to WriteSet(S). If R returns S,
then at the time that R reads S from a[|S|], we have that (a) every register
a[i] with i < |S| is non-empty (otherwise R would have stopped earlier),
and (b) |S| = m or a[|S| + 1] = (as otherwise R would have kept going
after later reading a[|S| + 1]. From the rule for when WriteSet calls are
linearized, we see that the linearization point of W precedes this time and
that the linearization point of any call to WriteSet with a larger set follows
it. So the return value of R is consistent.
The payoff: unless we do more updates than snapshots, dont want to
assume multi-writer registers, are worried about unbounded space, have a
beef with huge registers, or care about constant factors, it costs no more
time to do a snapshot than a collect. So in theory we can get away with
assuming snapshots pretty much wherever we need them.
4
This trick of reading in one direction and writing in another dates back to a paper by
Lamport from 1977 [Lam77].

CHAPTER 19. ATOMIC SNAPSHOTS

19.4

167

Practical snapshots using LL/SC

Though atomic registers are enough for snapshots, it is possible to get

a much more efficient snapshot algorithm using stronger synchronization
primitives. An algorithm of Riany, Shavit, and Touitou [RST01] uses loadlinked/store-conditional objects to build an atomic snapshot protocol
with linear-time snapshots and constant-time updates using small registers.
Well give a sketch of this algorithm here.
The RST algorithm involves two basic ideas: the first is a snapshot algorithm for a single scanner (i.e., only one process can do snapshots) in which
each updater maintains two copies of its segment, a high copy (that may
be more recent than the current scan) and a low copy (that is guaranteed
to be no more recent than the current scan). The idea is that when a scan
is in progress, updaters ensure that the values in memory at the start of
the scan are not overwritten before the scan is completed, by copying them
to the low registers, while the high registers allow new values to be written
without waiting for the scan to complete. Unbounded sequence numbers,
generated by the scanner, are used to tell which values are recent or not.
As long as there is only one scanner, nothing needs to be done to ensure
that all scans are consistent. But extending the algorithm to multiple scanners is tricky. A simple approach would be to keep a separate low register for
each concurrent scanhowever, this would require up to n low registers and
greatly increase the cost of an update. Instead, the authors devise a mechanism, called a coordinated collect, that allows the scanners collectively to
implement a sequence of virtual scans that do not overlap. Each virtual scan
is implemented using the single-scanner algorithm, with its output written
to a common view array that is protected from inconsistent updates using
LL/SC operations. A scanner participates in virtual scans until it obtains a
virtual scan that is useful to it (this means that the virtual scan has to take
place entirely within the interval of the processs actual scan operation); the
simplest way to arrange this is to have each scanner perform two virtual
scans and return the value obtained by the second one.
The paper puts a fair bit of work into ensuring that only O(n) view arrays
are needed, which requires handling some extra special cases where particularly slow processes dont manage to grab a view before it is reallocated
for a later virtual scan. We avoid this complication by simply assuming an
unbounded collection of view arrays; see the paper for how to do this right.
A more recent paper by Fatourou and Kallimanis [FK07] gives improved
time and space complexity using the same basic technique.

CHAPTER 19. ATOMIC SNAPSHOTS

19.4.1

168

Details of the single-scanner snapshot

The single-scanner snapshot is implemented using a shared currSeq variable

(incremented by the scanner but used by all processes) and an array memory
of n snapshot segments, each of which is divided into a high and low component consisting of a value and a timestamp. Initially, currSeq is 0, and all
memory locations are initialized to (, 0). This part of the algorithm does
not require LL/SC.
A call to scan copies the first of memory[j].high or memory[j].low that
has a sequence number less than the current sequence number. Pseudocode
is given as Algorithm 19.5.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

procedure scan()
currSeq currSeq + 1
for j 0 to n 1 do
h memory[j].high
if h.seq < currSeq then
view[j] h.value
else
view[j] memory[j].low.value
Algorithm 19.5: Single-scanner snapshot: scan

The update operation for process i cooperates by copying memory[i].high

to memory[i].low if its old.
The update operation always writes its value to memory[i].high, but preserves the previous value in memory[i].low if its sequence number indicates
that it may have been present at the start of the most recent call to scan.
This means that scan can get the old value if the new value is too recent.
Pseudocode is given in Algorithm 19.6.
1
2
3
4
5
6

procedure update()
seq currSeq
h memory[i].high
if h.seq 6= seq then
memory[i].low h
memory[i].high (value, seq)
Algorithm 19.6: Single-scanner snapshot: update

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169

To show this actually works, we need to show that there is a linearization

of the scans and updates that has each scan return precisely those values
whose corresponding updates are linearized before it. The ordering is based
on when each scan operation S increments currSeq and when each update
operation U reads it; specifically:
If U reads currSeq after S increments it, then S < U .
If U reads currSeq before S increments it and S reads memory[i].high
(where i is the process carrying out U ) before U writes it, then S < U .
If U reads currSeq before S increments it, but S reads memory[i].high
after U writes it, then U < S.
Updates are ordered based on intervening scans (i.e., U1 < U2 if U1 < S
and S < U2 by the above rules), or by the order in which they read currSeq
if there is no intervening scan.
To show this is a linearization, we need first to show that it extends the
ordering between operations in the original schedule. Each of the above rules
has 1 < 2 only if some low-level operation of 1 precedes some low-level
operation of 2 , with the exception of the transitive ordering of two update
events with an intervening scan. But in this last case we observe that if
U1 < S, then U1 writes memory[i].high before S reads it, so if U1 precedes
U2 in the actual execution, U2 must write memory[i].high after S reads it,
implying S < U2 .
Now we show that the values returned by scan are consistent with the
linearization ordering; that, is, for each i, scan copies to view[i] the value
in the last update by process i in the linearization. Examining the code for
scan, we see that a scan operation S takes memory[i].high if its sequence
number is less than currSeq, i.e. if the update operation U that wrote
it read currSeq before S incremented it and wrote memory[i].high before
S read it; this gives U < S. Alternatively, if scan takes memory[i].low,
then memory[i].low was copied by some update operation U 0 from the value
written to memory[i].high by some update U that read currSeq before S
incremented it. Here U 0 must have written memory[i].high before S read
it (otherwise S would have taken the old value left by U ) and since U
precedes U 0 (being an operation of the same process) it must therefor also
have written memory[i].high before S read it. So again we get the first case
of the linearization ordering and U < S.
So far we have shown only that S obtains values that were linearized
before it, but not that it ignores values that were linearized after it. So now
lets consider some U with S < U . Then one of two cases holds:

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U reads currSeq after S increments it. Then U writes a sequence

number in memory[i].high that is greater than or equal to the currSeq
value used by S; so S returns memory[i].low instead, which cant have
a sequence number equal to currSeq and thus cant be U s value either.
U reads currSeq before S increments it but writes memory[i].high after
S reads it. Now S wont return U s value from memory[i].high (it didnt
read it), and wont get it from memory[i].low either (because the value
that is in memory[i].high will have seq < currSeq, and so S will take
that instead).
So in either case, if S < U , then S doesnt return U s value. This
concludes the proof of correctness.

19.4.2

Extension to multiple scanners

See the paper for details.

The essential idea: view now represents a virtual scan viewr generated
cooperatively by all the scanners working together in some asynchronous
round r. To avoid conflicts, we update viewr using LL/SC or compare-andswap (so that only the first scanner to write wins), and pretend that reads
of memory[i] by losers didnt happen. When viewr is full, start a new virtual
scan and advance to the next round (and thus the next viewr+1 ).

19.5

Applications

Here we describe a few things we can do with snapshots.

19.5.1

Multi-writer registers from single-writer registers

One application of atomic snapshot is building multi-writer registers from

single-writer registers. The idea is straightforward: to perform a write, a
process does a snapshot to obtain the maximum sequence number, tags its
own value with this sequence number plus one, and then writes it. A read
consists of a snapshot followed by returning the value associated with the
largest sequence number (breaking ties by process id). (See [Lyn96, 13.5]
for a proof that this actually works.) This requires using a snapshot that
doesnt use multi-writer registers, and turns out to be overkill in practice;
there are simpler algorithms that give O(n) cost for reads and writes based
on timestamps (see [AW04, 10.2.3]).

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171

With additional work, it is even possible to eliminate the requirement

of multi-reader registers, and get a simulation of multi-writer multi-reader
registers that goes all the way down to single-writer single-read registers, or
even single-writer single-reader bits. See [AW04, 10.2.110.2.2] or [Lyn96,
13.4] for details.

19.5.2

Counters and accumulators

Given atomic snapshots, its easy to build a counter (supporting increment,

decrement, and read operations); or, in more generality, an accumulator
(supporting increments by arbitrary amounts); or, in even more generality, an object supporting any collection of commutative update operations
(as long as these operations dont return anything). The idea is that each
process stores in its segment the total of all operations it has performed
so far, and a read operation is implemented using a snapshot followed by
summing the results. This is a case where it is reasonable to consider multiwriter registers in building the snapshot implementation, because there is
not necessarily any circularity in doing so.

19.5.3

Resilient snapshot objects

The previous examples can be generalized to objects with operations that

either read the current state of the object but dont update it or update the
state but return nothing, provided the update operations either overwrite
each other (so that Cxy = Cy or Cyx = Cx) or commute (so that Cxy =
Cyx).
This was shown by Aspnes and Herlihy [AH90b] and improved on by
Anderson and Moir [AM93] by eliminating unbounded space usage (this
paper also defined the terms snapshot objects for those with separate read
and update operations and resilience for the property that all operations
commute or overwrite). The basic idea underneath both of these papers is to
use the multi-writer register construction given above, but break ties among
operations with the same sequence numbers by first placing overwritten
operations before overwriting operations and only then using process ids.
This almost shows that snapshots can implement any object with consensus number 1 where update operations return nothing, because an object
that violates the commute-or-overwrite condition in some configuration has
consensus number at least 2 (see 18.1.2). It doesnt quite work (as observed
in the Anderson-Moir paper), because the tie-breaking procedure assumes
a static ordering on which operations overwrite each other, so that given

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172

operations x and y where y overwrites x, y overwrites x in any configuration. But there may be objects with dynamic ordering, where y overwrites
x in some configuration, x overwrites y in another, and perhaps even the
two operations commute in yet another. This prevents us from achieving
consensus, but also breaks the tie-breaking technique. So it may be possible
that there are objects with consensus number 1 and no-return updates that
we still cant implement using only registers.

Chapter 20

Lower bounds on
perturbable objects
Being able to do snapshots in linear time means that we can build linearizable counters, generalized counters, max registers, etc. in linear time, by
having each reader take a snapshot and combine the contributions of each
updater using the appropriate commutative and associative operation. A
natural question is whether we can do better by exploiting the particular
features of these objects.
Unfortunately, the Jayanti-Tan-Toueg [JTT00] lower bound for perturbable objects says each of these objects requires n 1 space and n 1
steps for a read operation in the worst case, for any solo-terminating implementation from historyless objects.1
Here perturbable means that the object has a particular property that
makes the proof work, essentially that the outcome of certain special executions can be changed by stuffing lots of extra update operations in the
middle (see below for details). Solo-terminating means that a process
finishes its current operation in a finite number of steps if no other process
takes steps in between; it is a much weaker condition, for example, than
wait-freedom. Historyless objects are those for which any operation that
changes the state overwrites all previous operations (i.e., those for which
covering arguments work, as long as the covering processes never report
back what they say). Atomic registers are the typical example, while swap
objects (with a swap operation that writes a new state while returning the
old state) are the canonical example since they can implement any other
1

A caveat is that we may be able to make almost all read operations cheaper, although
we wont be able to do anything about the space bound. See Chapter 21.

173

CHAPTER 20. LOWER BOUNDS ON PERTURBABLE OBJECTS 174

historyless object (and even have consensus number 2, showing that even
extra consensus power doesnt necessarily help here).
Below is a sketch of the proof. See the original paper [JTT00] for more
details.
Build executions of the form k k , where k is a preamble consisting of various complete update operations and k incomplete update
operations, k delivers k delayed writes from the incomplete operations in k , and is a read operation whose first k reads are from
registers written in k .
Induction hypothesis is that such an execution exists for each
k n 1.
Base case is 0 0 = hi, covering 0 reads by .
Now we look for a sequence of operations that change what returns in k k (the object is perturbable if such a sequence always
exists).
For a max register, let include a bigger write than all the others.
For a counter, let include at least n increments. The same
works for a mod-m counter if m is at least 2n.
Why n increments? With fewer increments, we can make
return the same value by being sneaky about when the
partial increments represented in k are linearized.
In contrast, historyless objects (including atomic registers) are
not perturbable: if k includes a write that sets the value of the
object, no set of operations inserted before it will change this
value. (This is good, because we know that it only takes one
atomic register to implement an atomic register.)
Such a must write to some register not covered in k .
Find a 0 that writes to the first uncovered register that looks at (if
none exists, the reader is wasting a step), truncate before that write,
and prepend the write to k .
In more detail: let 0 = , where is the first write by 0
to the first register read by that is not covered by k . Let
k+1 = k and k+1 = k . So now k+1 k+1 = k k
and in particular k+1 covers the first k + 1 registers read by .

CHAPTER 20. LOWER BOUNDS ON PERTURBABLE OBJECTS 175

Note: 0 might be much longer than (this will be important
later, when we want to get around the JTT lower bound).
Repeat until weve covered n 1 registers. This implies that there
are at least n 1 registers, and in the worst case a reader reads all of
them.

Chapter 21

Restricted-use objects
Here we are describing work by Aspnes, Attiya, and Censor [AAC09], plus
some extensions by Aspnes et al. [AACHE12] and Aspnes and CensorHillel [ACH13]. The idea is to place restrictions on the size of objects that
would otherwise be subject to the Jayanti-Tan-Toueg bound [JTT00] (see
Chapter 20), in order to get cheap implementations.
The central object that is considered in this work is a max register,
for which read operation returns the largest value previously written, as
opposed to the last value previously written. So after writes of 0, 3, 5, 2, 6,
11, 7, 1, 9, a read operation will return 11.
These are perturbable objects in the sense of the Jayanti-Tan-Toueg
bound, so in the worst case a max-register read will have to read at least
n1 distinct atomic registers, giving an n1 lower bound on both individual
work and space. But we can get around this by considering bounded max
registers (which only hold values in some range 0 . . . m 1); these are not
perturbable because once one hits its upper bound we can no longer insert
new operations to change the value returned by a read.

21.1

Implementing bounded max registers

For m = 1, the implementation is trivial: write does nothing and read always
returns 0.
For larger m, well show how to paste together two max registers left and
right with m0 and m1 values together to get a max register r with m0 + m1
values. Well think of each value stored in the max register as a bit-vector,
with bit-vectors ordered lexicographically. In addition to left and right, we
will need a 1-bit atomic register switch used to choose between them. The
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read procedure is straightforward and is shown in Algorithm 21.1; essentially

we just look at switch, read the appropriate register, and prepend the value
of switch to what we get.
1
2
3
4
5

procedure read(r)
if switch = 0 then
return 0(read(left))
else
return 1(read(right))
Algorithm 21.1: Max register read operation

For write operations, we have two somewhat asymmetrical cases depending on whether the value we are writing starts with a 0 bit or a 1 bit. These
are shown in Algorithm 21.2.
1
2
3
4
5
6

procedure write(r, 0x)

if switch = 0 then
write(left, x)
procedure write(r, 1x)
write(right, x)
switch 1
Algorithm 21.2: Max register write operations

The intuition is that the max register is really a big tree of switch variables, and we store a particular bit-vector in the max register by setting to 1
the switches needed to make read follow the path corresponding to that bitvector. The procedure for writing 0x tests switch first, because once switch
gets set to 1, any 0x values are smaller than the largest value, and we dont
want them getting written to left where they might confuse particularly slow
readers into returning a value we cant linearize. The procedure for writing
1x sets switch second, because (a) it doesnt need to test switch, since 1x
always beats 0x, and (b) its not safe to send a reader down into right until
some value has actually been written there.
Its easy to see that read and write operations both require exactly
one operation per bit of the value read or written. To show that we get
linearizability, we give an explicit linearization ordering (see the paper for a
full proof that this works):

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178

1. All operations that read 0 from switch go in the first pile.

(a) Within this pile, we sort operations using the linearization ordering for left.
2. All operations that read 1 from switch or write 1 to switch go in the
second pile, which is ordered after the first pile.
(a) Within this pile, operations that touch right are ordered using
the linearization ordering for right. Operations that dont (which
are the do nothing writes for 0x values) are placed consistently
with the actual execution order.
To show that this gives a valid linearization, we have to argue first that
any read operation returns the largest earlier write argument and that we
dont put any non-concurrent operations out of order.
For the first part, any read in the 0 pile returns 0read(left), and read(left)
returns (assuming left is a linearizable max register) the largest value previously written to left, which will be the largest value linearized before the
read, or the all-0 vector if there is no such value. In either case we are
happy. Any read in the 1 pile returns 1read(right). Here we have to guard
against the possibility of getting an all-0 vector if no write operations linearize before the read. But any write operation that writes 1x doesnt set
switch to 1 until after it writes to right, so no read operation ever starts
read(right) until after at least one write to right has completed, implying
that that write to right linearizes before the read from right. So in this case
as well all the second-pile operations linearize.

21.2

Encoding the set of values

If we structure our max register as a balanced tree of depth k, we are essentially encoding the values 0 . . . 2k 1 in binary, and the cost of performing a
read or write operation on an m-valued register is exactly k = dlg me. But
if we are willing to build an unbalanced tree, any prefix code will work.
The paper describes a method of building a max register where the cost
of each operation that writes or reads a value v is O(log v). The essential
idea is to build a tree consisting of a rightward path with increasingly large
left subtrees hanging off of it, where each of these left subtrees is twice as big
as the previous. This means that after following a path encoded as 1k 0, we
hit a 2k -valued max register. The value returned after reading some v 0 from
this max register is v 0 + (2k 1), where the 2k 1 term takes into account

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all the values represented by earlier max registers in the chain. Formally,
this is equivalent to encoding values using an Elias gamma code, tweaked
slightly by changing the prefixes from 0k 1 to 1k 0 to get the ordering right.

21.3

Unbounded max registers

While the unbalanced-tree construction could be used to get an unbounded

max register, it is possible that read operations might not terminate (if
enough writes keep setting 1 bits on the right path before the read gets to
them) and for very large values the cost even of terminating reads becomes
higher than what we can get out of a snapshot.
Here is the snapshot-based method: if each process writes its own contribution to the max register to a single-writer register, then we can read the
max register by taking a snapshot and returning the maximum value. (It is
not hard to show that this is linearizable.) This gives an unbounded max
register with read and write cost O(n). So by choosing this in preference
to the balanced tree when m is large, the cost of either operation on a max
register is min (dlg me , O(n)).
We can combine this with the unbalanced tree by terminating the right
path with a snapshot-based max register. This gives a cost for reads and
writes of values v of O(min(log v, n)).

21.4

Lower bound

The min(dlg me , n 1) cost of a max register read turns out to be exactly optimal. Intuitively, we can show by a covering argument that once
some process attempts to write to a particular atomic register, then any
subsequent writes convey no additional information (because they can be
overwritten by the first delayed write)so in effect, no algorithm can use
get more than one bit of information out of each atomic register.
For the lower bound proof, we consider solo-terminating executions in
which n 1 writers do any number of max-register writes in some initial
prefix , followed by a single max-register read by process pn . Let T (m, n)
be the optimal reader cost for executions with this structure with m values,
and let r be the first register read by process pn , assuming it is running an
algorithm optimized for this class of executions (we do not even require it
to be correct for other executions).
We are now going split up our set of values based on which will cause
a write to write to r. Let Sk be the set of all sequences of writes that only

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write values k. Let t be the smallest value such that some execution in
St writes to r (there must be some such t, or our reader can omit reading r,
which contradicts the assumption that it is optimal).
Case 1 Since t is smallest, no execution in St1 writes to r. If we restrict
writes to values t 1, we can omit reading r, giving T (t, n)
T (m, n) 1 or T (m, n) T (t, n) + 1.
Case 2 Let be some execution in St that writes to r.
Split as 0 where is the first write to r by some process pi .
Construct a new execution 0 by letting all the max-register
writes except the one performing finish.
Now consider any execution 0 , where is any sequence of
max-register writes with values t that excludes pi and pn . Then
pn always sees the same value in r following these executions, but
otherwise (starting after 0 ) we have an (n 1)-process maxregister with values t through m 1.
Omit the read of r again to get T (m, n) T (m t, n 1) + 1.
Weve shown the recurrence T (m, n) mint (max(T (t, n), T (mt, n)))+
1, with base cases T (1, n) = 0 and T (m, 1) = 0. The solution to this recurrence is exactly min(dlg me , n 1), with is the same, except for a constant
factor on n, as the upper bound we got by choosing between a balanced
tree for small m and a snapshot for m 2n1 . For small m, the recursive
split we get is also the same as in the tree-based algorithm: call the r register switch and you can extract a tree from whatever algorithm somebody
gives you. So this says that the tree-based algorithm is (up to choice of the
tree) essentially the unique optimal bounded max register implementation
for m 2n1 .
It is also possible to show lower bounds on randomized implementations
of max registers and other restricted-use objects. See [AAC09, AACHH12]
for examples.

21.5

Max-register snapshots

With some tinkering, its possible to extend the max-register construction

to get an array of max registers that supports snapshots. The description
in this section follows [AACHE12].

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181

Formally, a max array is an object a that supports an operation write(a, i, v)

that sets a[i] max(v, a[i]), and an operation read(a) that returns a snapshot of all components of the array. The first step in building this beast is to
do it for two components. The resulting 2-component max array can then
be used as a building block for larger max arrays and for fast restricted-used
snapshots in general.
A k ` max array a is one that permits values in the range 0 . . . k 1 in
a[0] and 0 . . . ` 1 in a[1]. We think of a[0] as the head of the max array and
a[1] as the tail. Well show how to construct such an object recursively from
smaller objects of the same type, analogous to the construction of an mvalued max register (which we can think of as a m 1 max array). The idea
is to split head into two pieces left and right as before, while representing tail
as a master copy stored in a max register at the top of the tree plus cached
copies at every internal node. These cached copies are updated by readers
at times carefully chosen to ensure linearizability.
The base of the construction is an `-valued max register r, used directly
as a 1` max array; this is the case where the head component is trivial and
we only need to store a.tail = r. Here calling write(a, 0, v) does nothing,
while write(a, 1, v) maps to write(r, v), and read(a) returns h0, read(r)i.
For larger values of k, paste a k1 ` max array left and a k2 ` max
array right together to get a (k1 + k2 ) ` max array. This construction uses
a switch variable as in the basic construction, along with an `-valued max
register tail that is used to store the value of a[1]. A call to write(a, 1, v)
operation writes tail directly, while write(a, 0, v) and read(a) follow the
structure of the corresponding operations for a simple max register, with
some extra work in read to make sure that the value in tail propagates into
left and right as needed to ensure the correct value is returned.
Pseudocode is given in Algorithm 21.3.
The individual step complexity of each operation is easily computed.
Assuming a balanced tree, write(a, 0, v) takes exactly lg k steps, while
write(a, 1, v) costs exactly lg ` steps; in both cases the cost is identical
to that of a max-register write. Read operations are more complicated. In
the worst case, we have two reads of a.tail and a write to a.right[1] at each
level, plus up to two operations on a.switch, for a total cost of at most
(3 lg k 1)(lg ` + 2) = O(log k log `) steps.
In the special case where k = `, we get that writes cost the same number
of steps as in a single-component k-valued max register while the cost of
reads is squared.

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1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

procedure write(a, i, v)
if i = 0 then
if v < k1 then
if a.switch = 0 then
write(a.left, 0, v)
else
write(a.right, 0, v k1 )
a.switch 1
else
write(a.tail, v)
procedure read(a)
x read(a.tail)
if a.switch = 0 then
write(a.left, 1, x)
return read(a.left)
else
x read(a.tail)
write(a.right, 1, x)
return hk1 , 0i + read(a.right)

Algorithm 21.3: Recursive construction of a 2-component max array

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21.5.1

183

Linearizability

In broad outline, the proof of linearizability follows the proof for a simple
max register. But as with snapshots, we have to show that the ordering of
the head and tail components are consistent.
The key observation is the following lemma.
Lemma 21.5.1. Fix some execution of a max array a implemented as in
Algorithm 21.3. Suppose this execution contains a read(a) operation left
that returns vleft from a.left and a read(a) operation right that returns vright
from a.right. Then vleft [1] vright [1].
Proof. Both vleft [1] and vright [1] are values that were previously written to
their respective max arrays by read(a) operations (such writes necessarily exist because any process that reads a.left or a.right writes a.left[1] or
a.right[1] first). From examining the code, we have that any value written
to a.left[1] was read from a.tail before a.switch was set to 1, while any value
written to a.right[1] was read from a.tail after a.switch was set to 1. Since
max-register reads are non-decreasing, we have than any value written to
a.left[1] is less than or equal to any value written to a.right[1], proving the
claim.
The rest of the proof is tedious but straightforward: we linearize the
read(a) and write(a[0]) operations as in the max-register proof, then fit
the write(a[1]) operations in based on the tail values of the reads. The full
result is:
Theorem 21.5.2. If a.left and a.right are linearizable max arrays, and a.tail
is a linearizable max register, then Algorithm 21.3 implements a linearizable
max array.
Its worth noting that the same unbalanced-tree construction used in
21.2 and 21.3 can be used here as well; this gives a cost of O(min(log v, n))
for writes and O(min(log v[0], n) min(log v[1], n)) for reads, where v is the
value written or read.

21.5.2

Application to standard snapshots

To build an ordinary snapshot object from 2-component max arrays, we

construct a balanced binary tree in which each leaves holds a pointer to
an individual snapshot element and each internal node holds a pointer to
a partial snapshot containing all of the elements in the subtree of which

CHAPTER 21. RESTRICTED-USE OBJECTS

184

it is the root. The pointers themselves are non-decreasing indices into arrays of values that consist of ordinary (although possibly very wide) atomic
registers.
When a process writes a new value to its component of the snapshot
object, it increases the pointer value in its leaf and then propagates the
new value up the tree by combining together partial snapshots at each step,
using 2-component max arrays to ensure linearizability. The resulting algorithm is similar in many ways to the lattice agreement procedure of Inoue et
al. [IMCT94] (see 19.3.5), except that it uses a more contention-tolerant
snapshot algorithm than double collects and we allow processes to update
their values more than once. It is also similar to some constructions of
Jayanti [Jay02] for efficient computation of array aggregates (sum, min,
max, etc.) using LL/SC, the main difference being that because the index
values are non-decreasing, max arrays can substitute for LL/SC.
Each node in the tree except the root is represented by one component
of a 2-component max array that we can think of as being owned by its
parent, with the other component being the nodes sibling in the tree. To
propagate a value up the tree, at each level the process takes a snapshot
of the two children of the node and writes the sum of the indices to the
nodes component in its parents max array (or to an ordinary max register
if we are at the root). Before doing this last write, a process will combine
the partial snapshots from the two child nodes and write the result into
a separate array indexed by the sum. In this way any process that reads
the nodes component can obtain the corresponding partial snapshot in a
single register operation. At the root this means that the cost of obtaining
a complete snapshot is dominated by the cost of the max-register read, at
O(log v), where v is the number of updates ever performed.
A picture of this structure, adapted from [AACHE12], appears in Figure 21.1. The figure depicts an update in progress, with red values being the
new values written as part of the update. Only some of the tables associated
with the nodes are shown.
The cost of an update is dominated by the O(log n) max-array operations
needed to propagate the new value to the root. This takes O(log2 v log n)
steps.
The linearizability proof is trivial: linearize each update by the time at
which a snapshot containing its value is written to the root (which necessarily
occurs within the interval of the update, since we dont let an update finish
until it has propagated its value to the top), and linearize reads by when they
read the root. This immediately gives us an O(log3 n) implementation
as long as we only want to use it polynomially many timesof anything

CHAPTER 21. RESTRICTED-USE OBJECTS

cms
cmr
bmr
br
ar
a

5
0
0

5
3

0
c
b
a

ms
mr
m

3
1

185

2
s
r

Figure 21.1: Snapshot from max arrays [AACHE12]

we can build from snapshot, including counters, generalized counters, and
(by [AH90b, AM93]) any other object whose operations all commute with
or overwrite each other in a static pattern.
Randomization can eliminate the need to limit the number of times the
snapshot is used. The JTT bound still applies, so there will be occasional
expensive operations, but we can spread these out randomly so that any
particular operation has low expected cost. This gives a cost of O(log3 n)
expected steps for an unrestricted snapshot. See [ACH13] for details.
In some cases, further improvements are possible. The original maxregisters paper [AAC09] gives an implementation of counters using a similar
tree construction with only max registers that costs only O(log2 n) for increments; here the trick is to observe that counters that can only be incremented
by one are much easier to make linearizable, because there is no possibility of seeing an intermediate value that couldnt be present in a sequential
execution.

Chapter 22

Common2
The common2 class, defined by Afek, Weisberger, and Weisman [AWW93]
consists of all read-modify-write objects where the modify functions either
(a) all commute with each other or (b) all overwrite each other. We can
think of it as the union of two simpler classes, the set of read-modifywrite objects where all update operations commute, called commuting
objects [AW99]; and the set of read-modify-write objects where all updates produce a value that doesnt depend on the previous state, called
historyless objects [FHS98]).
From 18.1.2, we know that both commuting objects and historyless
objects have consensus number at most 2, and that these objects have consensus number exactly 2 provided they supply at least one non-trivial update
operation. The main result of Afek et al. [AWW93] is that commuting and
historyless objects can all be implemented from any object with consensus number 2, even in systems with more than 2 processes. This gives a
completeness result analogous to completeness results in complexity theory: any non-trivial common2 object can be used to implement any other
common2 object.
The main result in the paper has two parts, reflecting the two parts of
the common2 class: a proof that 2-process consensus plus registers is enough
to implement all commuting objects (which essentially comes down to build
a generalized fetch-and-add that returns an unordered list of all preceding
operations); and a proof that 2-process consensus plus registers is enough
to implement all overwriting objects (which is equivalent to showing that
we can implement swap objects). The construction of the generalized fetchand-add is pretty nasty, so well concentrate on the implementation of swap
objects, limiting ourselves specifically to construction of single-use swap. For

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187

the remaining results, youll have to go to the paper itself [AWW93].

22.1

Test-and-set and swap for two processes

The first step is to get test-and-set.

Algorithm 22.1 shows how to turn 2-process consensus into 2-process
test-and-set. The idea is that whoever wins the consensus protocol wins the
test-and-set. This is linearizable, because if I run TAS2 before you do, I win
the consensus protocol by validity.
1
2
3
4
5

procedure TAS2()
if Consensus2(myId) = myId then
return 0
else
return 1

Algorithm 22.1: Building 2-process TAS from 2-process consensus

Once we have test-and-set for two processes, we can easily get one-shot
swap for two processes. The trick is that a one-shot swap object always
returns to the first process to access it and returns the other processs value
to the second process. We can distinguish these two roles using test-and-set
and add a register to send the value across. Pseudocode is in Algorithm 22.2.
1
2
3
4
5
6

procedure swap(v)
a[myId] = v
if TAS2() = 0 then
return
else
return a[myId]
Algorithm 22.2: Two-process one-shot swap from TAS

22.2

Building n-process TAS from 2-process TAS

To turn the TAS2 into full-blown n-process TAS, start by staging a tournament along the lines of [PF77] (17.4.1.2). Each process walks up a tree of
nodes, and at each node it attempts to beat every process from the other

CHAPTER 22. COMMON2

188

subtree using a TAS2 object (we cant just have it fight one process, because
we dont know which other process will have won the other subtree). A
process drops out if it ever sees a 1. We can easily show that at most one
process leaves each subtree with all zeros, including the whole tree itself.
Unfortunately, this process does not give a linearizable test-and-set object. It is possible that p1 loses early to p2 , but then p3 starts (elsewhere
in the tree) after p1 finishes, and races to the top, beating out p2 . To avoid
this, we can follow [AWW93] and add a gate bit that locks out latecomers.1
The resulting construction looks something like Algorithm 22.3. This
gives a slightly different interface that straight TAS; instead of returning 0
for winning and 1 for losing, the algorithm returns for winning and the id
of some process that beats you for losing. Its not hard to see that this gives
a linearizable test-and-set after translating the values back to 0 and 1 (the
trick for linearizability is that any process that wins saw an empty gate, and
so started before any other process finished). It also sorts the processes into
a rooted tree, with each process linearizing after its parent (this latter claim
is a little trickier, but basically comes down to a loser linearizing after the
process that defeated it either on gate or on one of the TAS2 objects).
procedure compete(i)
// check the gate
if gate 6= then
return gate

2
3

gate i
// Do tournament, returning id of whoever I lose to
node leaf for i
while node 6= root do
for each j whose leaf is below sibling of node do
if TAS2(t[i, j]) = 1 then
return j

5
6
7
8
9

node node.parent

// I win!
return

Algorithm 22.3: Tournament algorithm with gate

The original version of this trick is from an earlier paper [AGTV92], where the gate
bit is implemented as an array of single-writer registers.

CHAPTER 22. COMMON2

22.3

189

Single-use swap objects

Here well show how to implement a single-use swap object, where each
process is only allowed to execute a single swap operation. The essential idea
is to explicitly string the processes into a sequence, where each process learns
the identity of the process ahead of it. This sequence gives the linearization
order and allows processes to compute their return values by reading the
input stored by their predecessor.
The algorithm proceeds in asynchronous rounds, with the participants
of each round organized into a tree using the compete procedure from Algorithm 22.3. The winner at round k will attempt to thread itself behind some
process at round k 1, starting with the process it lost to at that round (or
nobody if k = 1). In order for this to work, the round k 1 process must be
locked down to round k 1 (and thread itself behind some other process at
round k1); this is done using a trap object implemented with a 2-process
swap. If the target process escapes by calling the trap object first, it will
leave behind the id of the process it lost to at round k 1, allowing the
round-k winner to try again. If the round-k winner fails to trap anybody, it
will eventually thread itself behind the round-(k 1) winner, who is stuck
at round k 1.
Only those processes that are ancestors of the process that beat the
round-k winner may get trapped in round k 1; everybody else will escape
and try again in a later round.
Pseudocode for the trap object is given in Algorithm 22.4. There are two
operations. The pass operation is called by the process trying to escape;
if it executes first, this process successfully escapes, but leaves behind the
identity of somebody else to try. The block operation locks the target down
so that pass fails. The shared data for a trap t consists of a two-process
swap object t[i, j] for each process i trying to block a process j. A utility
procedure passAll is included that calls pass on all potential blockers until
it fails.
It is not hard to see from the code that Algorithm 22.4 has the desired
properties: if the passer reaches the swap object first, it is not blocked but
leaves behind its value v for the passer; while if the blocker reaches the
object first, it obtains no value but successfully blocks the passer.
The full swap construction is given in Algorithm 22.5.
This just implements the blocking strategy described before, with the
main swap procedure implementing the round structure and the findValue
helper procedure implementing the walk up the tree.
Its not hard to see that when all processes finish the protocol, they will

CHAPTER 22. COMMON2

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2

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4
5
6
7

8
9
10

190

procedure block(t, j)
return swap(t[j, i], blocked)
procedure pass(t, j, v)
if swap(t[i, j], v) = blocked then
return false
else
return true
procedure passAll(t, v)
for j 1 to n do
if pass(t, j, v) then return false

11
12

return true
Algorithm 22.4: Trap implementation from [AWW93]

be neatly arranged in a chain with each process except the first obtaining
the value of its predecessor. Slightly less easy to see is that this ordering
will be consistent with the observed execution order, which is necessary for
linearizability. For a proof of linearizability, see the paper.

CHAPTER 22. COMMON2

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5

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7

8
9

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12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

procedure swap (v)

input[i] v
for k 1 to n do
// find our first target
t compete(tournament[k])
if t = then
// I am the round-k winner
return findValue(k 1, t0 )
else if passAll(trap[k], t) do
// I did not escape
return findValue(k, t)
else
// I escaped, remember who I lost to
t0 t

procedure findValue(k, t)
if k = 0 then
return
else
repeat
x block(trap[k], t)
if x 6= then t x
until x =
return input[t]
Algorithm 22.5: Single-use swap from [AWW93]

191

Chapter 23

Randomized consensus and

test-and-set
Weve seen that we cant solve consensus in an asynchronous system with
one crash failure [FLP85, LAA87], but that the problem becomes solvable
using failure detectors [CT96]. An alternative that also allows us to solve
consensus is to allow the processes to use randomization, by providing each
process with a local coin that can generate random values that are immediately visible only to that process. The resulting randomized consensus
problem replaces the termination requirement with probabilistic termination: all processes terminate with probability 1. The agreement and
validity requirements remain the same.
In this chapter, we will describe how randomization interacts with the
adversary, give a bit of history of randomized consensus, and then concentrate on recent algorithms for randomized consensus and the closely-related
problem of randomized test-and-set. Much of the material in this chapter is
adapted from notes for a previous course on randomized algorithms [Asp11]
and my own recent papers [Asp12b, AE11, Asp12a].

23.1

Role of the adversary in randomized algorithms

Because randomized processes are unpredictable, we need to become a little

more sophisticated in our handling of the adversary. As in previous asynchronous protocols, we assume that the adversary has control over timing,
which we model by allowing the adversary to choose at each step which
process performs the next operation. But now the adversary may do so
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CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET193

based on knowledge of the state of the protocol and its past evolution. How
much knowledge we give the adversary affects its power. Several classes of
adversaries have been considered in the literature; ranging from strongest
to weakest, we have:
1. An adaptive adversary. This adversary is a function from the state
of the system to the set of processes; it can see everything that has
happened so far (including coin-flips internal to processes that have not
yet been revealed to anybody else), but cant predict the future. Its
known that an adaptive adversary can force any randomized consensus
protocol to take (n2 ) total steps [AC08]. The adaptive adversary is
also called a strong adversary following a foundational paper of
Abrahamson [Abr88].
2. An intermediate adversary or weak adversary [Abr88] is one
that limits the adversarys ability to observe or control the system in
some way, without completely eliminating it. For example, a contentoblivious adversary [Cha96] or value-oblivious adversary [Aum97]
is restricted from seeing the values contained in registers or pending
write operations and from observing the internal states of processes
directly. A location-oblivious adversary [Asp12b] can distinguish
between values and the types of pending operations, but cant discriminate between pending operations based one which register they are
operating on. These classes of adversaries are modeled by imposing
an equivalence relation on partial executions and insisting that the
adversary make the same choice of processes to go next in equivalent
situations. Typically they arise because somebody invented a consensus protocol for the oblivious adversary below, and then looked for the
next most powerful adversary that still let the protocol work.
Weak adversaries often allow much faster consensus protocols than
adaptive adversaries. Each of the above adversaries permits consensus
to be achieved in O(log n) expected individual work using an appropriate algorithm. But from a mathematical standpoint, weak adversaries
are a bit messy, and once you start combining algorithms designed for
different weak adversaries, its natural to move all the way down to
the weakest reasonable adversary, the oblivious adversary described
below.
3. A oblivious adversary has no ability to observe the system at all;
instead, it fixes a sequence of process ids in advance, and at each step
the next process in the sequence runs.

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET194

We will describe below a protocol that guarantees O(log log n) expected individual work for an oblivious adversary. It is not known
whether this is optimal; in fact, is is consistent with the best known
lower bound (due to Attiya and Censor [AC08]) that consensus can be
solved in O(1) expected individual steps against an oblivious adversary.

23.2

History

The use of randomization to solve consensus in an asynchronous system

with crash failures was proposed by Ben-Or et al.Ben-Or1983 for a messagepassing model. Chor, Israeli, and Li [CIL94] gave the first wait-free consensus protocol for a shared-memory system, which assumed a particular kind
of weak adversary. Abrahamson [Abr88] defined strong and weak adversaries and gave the first wait-free consensus
2 protocol for a strong adversary;
its expected step complexity was 2n . After failing to show that exponential time was necessary, Aspnes and Herlihy [AH90a] showed how to do
consensus in O(n4 ) total work, a value that was soon reduced to O(n2 log n)
by Bracha and Rachman [BR91]. This remained the best known bound for
the strong-adversary model until Attiya and Censor [AC08] showed matching (n2 ) upper and lower bounds for the problem; subsequent work [AC09]
showed that it was also possible to get an O(n) bound on individual work.
For weak adversaries, the best known upper bound on individual step
complexity was O(log n) for a long time [Cha96, Aum97, Asp12b], with
an O(n) bound on total step complexity for some models [Asp12b]. More
recent work has lowered the bound to O(log log n), under the assumption of
an oblivious adversary [Asp12a]. No non-trivial lower bound on expected
individual step complexity is known, although there is a known lower bound
on the distribution of of the individual step complexity [ACH10].

23.3

Reduction to simpler primitives

To show how to solve consensus using randomization, it helps to split the

problem in two: we will first see how to detect when weve achieved agreement, and then look at how to achive agreement.

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET195

23.3.1

Adopt-commit objects

Most known randomized consensus protocols have a round-based structure where we alternative between generating and detecting agreement.
Gafni [Gaf98] proposed adopt-commit protocols as a tool for detecting agreement, and these protocols were later abstracted as adopt-commit
objects [MRRT08, AGGT09]. The version described here is largely taken
from [AE11], which shows bounds on the complexity of adopt-commit objects.
An adopt-commit object supports a single operation, AdoptCommit (u),
where u is an input from a set of m values. The result of this operation is an
output of the form (commit, v) or (adopt, v), where the second component
is a value from this set and the first component is a decision bit that
indicates whether the process should decide value v immediately or adopt it
as its preferred value in later rounds of the protocol.
The requirements for an adopt-commit object are the usual requirements
of validity and termination, plus:
1. Coherence. If the output of some operation is (commit, v), then every
output is either (adopt, v) or (commit, v).
2. Convergence. If all inputs are v, all outputs are (commit, v).
These last two requirement replace the agreement property of consensus.
They are also strictly weaker than consensus, which means that a consensus
object (with all its output labeled commit) is also an adopt-commit object.
The reason we like adopt-commit objects is that they allow the simple
consensus protocol shown in Algorithm 23.1.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

preference input
for r 1 . . . do
(b, preference) AdoptCommit(AC[r], preference)
if b = commit then
return preference
else
do something to generate a new preference
Algorithm 23.1: Consensus using adopt-commit

The idea is that the adopt-commit takes care of ensuring that once somebody returns a value (after receiving commit), everybody else who doesnt

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET196

return adopts the same value (follows from coherence). Conversely, if everybody already has the same value, everybody returns it (follows from
convergence). The only missing piece is the part where we try to shake all
the processes into agreement. For this we need a separate object called a
conciliator.

23.3.2

Conciliators

Conciliators are a weakened version of randomized consensus that replace

agreement with probabilistic agreement: its OK if the processes disagree
sometimes as long as they agree with constant probability despite interference by the adversary. An algorithm that satisfies termination, validity, and
probabilistic agreement is called a conciliator.1
The important feature of conciliators is that if we plug a conciliator that
guarantees agreement with probability at least into Algorithm 23.1, then
on average we only have to execute the loop 1/ times before every process
agrees. This gives an expected cost equal to 1/ times the total cost of
AdoptCommit and the conciliator. Typically we will aim for constant .

23.4

Implementing an adopt-commit object

Whats nice about adopt-commit objects is that they can be implemented

deterministically. Here well give a simple adopt-commit object for two
values, 0 and 1. Optimal (under certain assumptions) constructions of mvalued adopt-commits can be found in [AE11].
Pseudocode is given in Algorithm 23.2.
Structurally, this is pretty similar to a splitter (see 17.4.2, except that
we use values instead of process ids.
We now show correctness. Termination and validity are trivial. For
coherence, observe that if I return (commit, v) I must have read a[v] = false
before any process with v writes a[v]; it follows that all such processes
will see proposal 6= and return (adopt, v). For convergence, observe that
if all processes have the same input v, they all write it to proposal and all
observe a[v] = false, causing them all to return (commit, v).
1

Warning: This name has not really caught on in the general theory-of-distributedcomputing community, and so far only appears in papers that have a particular researcher
as a co-author [Asp12a, AE11, Asp12b]. Unfortunately, there doesnt seem to be a better
name for the same object that has caught on. So we are stuck with it for now.

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET197

shared data: a[0], a[1], initially false; proposal, initially
procedure AdoptCommit(v)
a[v] 1
if proposal = then
proposal v
else
v proposal

1
2
3
4
5
6

if a[v] = false then

return (commit, v)
else
return (adopt, v)

7
8
9
10

Algorithm 23.2: A 2-valued adopt-commit object

23.5

A one-register conciliator for an oblivious adversary

shared data: register r, initially

k0
while r = do
2k
with probability 2n
do
write v to r
else
do a dummy operation

1
2
3
4
5
6

k k+1

return r

Algorithm 23.3: Impatient first-mover conciliator from [Asp12b]

Algorithm 23.3 implements a conciliator using a single register; it works
against an oblivious adversary.2 This particular construction is taken from [Asp12b],
and is based on an earlier algorithm of Chor, Israeli, and Li [CIL94]. The
cost of this algorithm is expected O(n) total work and O(log n) individual
work. Its not known whether it is possible to improve on this bound.
The basic idea is that processes alternate between reading a register r
2

Or any adversary dumb enough not to be able to block the write based on how the
coin-flip turned out.

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET198

and (maybe) writing to the register; if a process reads a non-null value from
the register, it returns it. Any other process that reads the same non-null
value will agree with the first process; the only way that this cant happen
is if some process writes a different value to the register before it notices the
first write.
The random choice of whether to write the register or not avoids this
problem. The idea is that even though the adversary can schedule a write
at a particular time, because its oblivious, it wont be able to tell if the
process wrote (or was about to write) or did a no-op instead.
The basic version of this algorithm, due to Chor, Israeli, and Li [CIL94],
1
uses a fixed 2n
probability of writing to the register. So once some process
writes to the register, the chance that any of the remaining n 1 processes
write to it before noticing that its non-null is at most n1
2n < 1/2. Its also
not hard to see that this algorithm uses O(n) total operations, although it
may be that one single process running by itself has to go through the loop
2n times before it finally writes the register and escapes.
Using increasing probabilities avoids this problem, because any process
that executes the main loop dlg ne + 1 times will write the register. This
establishes the O(log n) per-process bound on operations. At the same time,
an O(n) bound on total operations still holds, since each write has at least
1
a 2n
chance of succeeding. The price we pay for the improvement is that
we increase the chance that an initial value written to the register gets
overwritten by some high-probability write. But the intuition is that the
probabilities cant grow too much, because the probability that I write on
my next write is close to the sum of the probabilities that I wrote on my
previous writessuggesting that if I have a high probability of writing next
time, I should have done a write already.
Formalizing this intuition requires a little bit of work. Fix the schedule,
and let pi be the probability that the i-th write operation in this schedule
P
succeeds. Let t be the least value for which ti=1 pi 1/4. Were going to
argue that with constant probability one of the first t writes succeeds, and
that the next n 1 writes by different processes all fail.
The probability that none of the first t writes succeed is
t
Y

(1 pi )

i=1

t
Y

epi

i=1

= exp

t
X
i=1

e1/4 .

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET199

Now observe that if some process q writes at or before the t-th write,
then any process with a pending write either did no writes previously, or its
last write was among the first t 1 writes, whose probabilities sum to less
1
than 1/4. In the first case, the process has a 2n
chance of writing on its
P
1
next attempt. In the second, it has a iSq pi + 2n chance of writing on its
next attempt, where Sq is the set of indices in 1 . . . t 1 where q attempts
to write.
Summing up these probabilities over all processes gives a total of n1
2n +
P P
1/4
(13/4) =
q
iSq pi 1/2+1/4 = 3/4. So with probabililty at least e
1/4
e
/4, we get agreement.

23.6

Sifters

A faster conciliator can be obtained using a sifter, which is a mechanism for

rapidly discarding processes using randomization [AA11] while keeping at
least one process around. The idea of a sifter is to have each process either
write a register (with low probability) or read it (with high probability); all
writers and all readers that see continue to the next stage of the protocol,
while all readers who see a non-null value drop out. An appropriately
tuned sifter will reduce n processes to at most 2 n processes on average; by
iterating this mechanism, the expected number of remaining processes can
be reduced to 1 + after O(log log n + log(1/)) phases.
As with previous implementations of test-and-set (see Algorithm 22.3),
its often helpful to have a sifter return not only that a process lost but which
process it lost to. This gives the implementation shown in Algorithm 23.4.
1
2
3
4
5
6

procedure sifter(p, r)
with probability p do
r id
return
else
return r
Algorithm 23.4: A sifter

To use a sifter effectively, p should be tuned to match the number of

processes that are likely to use it. This is because of the following lemma:

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET200

Lemma 23.6.1. Fix p, and let X processes executed a sifter with parameter
p. Let Y be the number of processes for which the sifter returns . Then
1
E [X | Y ] pX + .
p

(23.6.1)

Proof. In order to return , a process must either (a) write to r, which

occurs with probability p, or (b) read r before any other process writes to
it. The expected number of writers, conditioned on X, is exactly pX. The
expected number of readers before the first write has a geometric distribution
truncated by X. Removing the truncation gives exactly p1 expected readers,
which is an upper bound on the correct value.
For n initial processes, the choice of p that minimizes the bound in

(23.6.1) is 1n , giving at most 2 n expected survivors. Iterating this process

with optimal p at each step gives a sequence of at most n, 2 n, 2 2 n,

etc., expected survivors after each sifter. The twos are a little annoying, but
a straightforward induction bounds the expected survivors after i rounds by
i
4 n2 . In particular, we get at most 8 expected survivors after dlg lg ne
rounds.
At this point it makes sense to switch to a fixed p and a different analysis. For p = 1/2, the first process to access r always survives, and each
subsequent process survives with probability at most 3/4 (because it leaves
if the first process writes and it reads).
So themnumber of excess processes
l
i
drops as (3/4) , and an additional log4/3 (7/) rounds are enough to reduce
the expected number of survivors from 1 + 7 to 1 + for any fixed .3
It follows that
Theorem 23.6.2. An initial set of n processes can be reduced to 1 with
probability at least 1 using O(log log n + log(1/)) rounds of sifters.
l

Proof. Let X be the number of survivors after dlg lg ne+ log4/3 (7/) rounds
of sifters, with probabilities tuned as described above. Weve shown that
E [X] 1 + , so E [X 1] . Since X 1 0, from Markovs inequality
we have Pr [X 2] = Pr [X 1 1] E [X 1] /1 .
3

This argument essentially follows the proof of [Asp12a, Theorem 2], which, because
of neglecting to subtract off a 1 at one point, ends up with 8/ instead of 7/.

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET201

23.6.1

Test-and-set using sifters

Sifters were initially designed to be used for test-and-set. For this purpose,
we treat a return value of as keep going and anything else as leave
with value 1. Using O(log log n) rounds of sifters, we can get down to one
process that hasnt left with probability at least 1 logc n for any fixed
constant c. We then need a fall-back TAS to handle the logc n chance that
we get more than one such survivor.
Alistarh and Aspnes [AA11] used the RatRace algorithm of Alistarh et
al. [AAG+ 10] for this purpose. This is an adaptive randomized test-and-set
built from splitters and two-process consensus objects that runs in O(log k)
expected time, where k is the number of processes that access the test-andset; a sketch of this algorithm is given in 24.5.2. If we want to avoid appealing to this algorithm, a somewhat simpler approach is to use an approach
similar to the Lamports fast-path mutual exclusion algorithm (described in
17.4.2): any process that survives the splitters tries to rush to a two-process
TAS at the top of a tree of two-processes TASes by winning a splitter, and
if it doesnt win the splitter, it enters at a leaf and pays O(log n) expected
steps. By setting = 1/ log n, the overall expected cost of this final stage is
O(1).
This algorithm does not guarantee linearizability. I might lose a sifter
early on only to have a later process win all the sifters (say, by writing to
each one) and return 0. A gate bit as in Algorithm 22.3 solves this problem.
The full code is given in Algorithm 23.5.

23.6.2

Consensus using sifters

With some trickery, the sifter mechanism can be adapted to solve consensus,
still in O(log log n) expected individual work [Asp12a]. The main difficulty
is that a process can no longer drop out as soon as it knows that it lost:
it still needs to figure out who won, and possible help that winner over the
finish line.
The basic idea is that when a process p loses a sifter to some other process
q, p will act like a clone of q from that point on. In order to make this work,
each process writes down at the start of the protocol all of the coin-flips it
intends to use to decide whether to read or write at each round of sifting.
Together with its input, these coin-flips make up the processs persona.
In analyzing the progress of the sifter, we count surviving personae (with
multiple copies of the same persona counting as one) instead of surviving
processes.

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET202

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

12
13
14
15

if gate 6= then
return 1
else
gate myId
l

for i 1 . . . dlog log ne + log4/3 (7 log n) do

with
ri
else
w
if

i+1

probability min 1/2, 212

myId

ri
w 6= then
return 1

if splitter() = stop then

return 0
else
return AWWTAS()
Algorithm 23.5: Test-and-set in O(log log n) expected time

Pseudocode for this algorithm is given in Algorithm 23.6. Note that the
loop body is essentially the same as the code in Algorithm 23.4, except that
the random choice is replaced by a lookup in persona.chooseWrite.
To show that this works, we need to argue that having multiple copies
of a persona around doesnt change the behavior of the sifter. In each
round, we will call the first process with a given persona p to access ri
the representative of p, and argue that a persona survives round i in
this algorithm precisely when its representative would survive round i in
a corresponding test-and-set sifter with the schedule restricted only to the
representatives.
There are three cases:
1. The representative of p writes. Then at least one copy of p survives.
2. The representative of p reads a null value. Again at least one copy of
p survives.
3. The representative of p reads a non-null value. Then no copy of p
survives: all subsequent reads by processes carrying p also read a nonnull value and discard p, and since no process with p writes, no other
process adopts p.

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET203

1
2

procedure conciliator(input)
l
m
Let R = dlog log ne + log4/3 (7/)

Let chooseWrite be a vector of R independent random Boolean

variables with Pr[chooseWrite[i] = 1] = pi , where
i+1
i
pi = 212
(n)2 for i dlog log ne and pi = 1/2 for larger i.
persona hinput, chooseWrite, myIdi
for i 1 . . . R do
if persona.chooseWrite[i] = 1 then
ri persona
else
v ri
if v 6= then
persona v

return persona.input

4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Algorithm 23.6: Sifting conciliator (from [Asp12a])

From the preceding analysis for test-and-set, we have that after O(log log n+
log 1/) rounds with appropriate probabilities of writing, at most 1+ values
survive on average. This gives a probability of at most of disagreement. By
alternating these conciliators with adopt-commit objects, we get agreement
in O(log log n + log m/ log log m) expected time, where m is the number of
possible input values.
I dont think the O(log log n) part of this expression is optimal, but I
dont know how to do better.

23.7

O(log n) Randomized test-and-set

A more sophisticated sifter due to Giakkoupis and Woelfel [GW12a] removes

all but O(log n) processes, on average, using two operations for each process. Iterating this sifter reduces the expected survivors to O(1) in O(log n)
rounds. A particularly nice feature of the Giakkoupis-Woelfel algorithm is
that (if you dont care about space) it doesnt have any parameters that
require tuning to n: this means that exactly the same structure can be used
in each round. An unfortunate feature is that its not possible to guarantee that every process that leaves learns the identity of a process that stays:
this means that it cant adapted into a consensus protocol using the persona

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET204

trick described in 23.6.2.
Pseudocode is given in Algorithm 23.7. In this simplified version, we
assume an infinitely long array A[1 . . . ], so that we dont need to worry
about n. Truncating the array at log n also works, but the analysis requires
handling the last position as a special case, which I am too lazy to do here.

1
2
3
4
5
6

Choose r Z+ such that Pr [r = i] = 2i

A[r] 1
if A[r + 1] = 0 then
stay
else
leave
Algorithm 23.7: Giakkoupis-Woelfel sifter [GW12a]

Lemma 23.7.1. In any execution of Algorithm 23.7 with an oblivious adversary and n processes, at least one process stays, and the expected number
of processes that stay is O(log n).
Proof. For the first part, observe that any process that picks the largest
value of r among all processes will survive; since the number of processes is
finite, there is at least one such survivor.
For the second part, let Xi be the number of survivors with r = i. Then
E [Xi ] is bounded by n 2i , since no process survives with r = i without
first choosing r = i. But we can also argue that E [Xi ] 3 for any value of
n, by considering the sequence of write operations in the execution.
Because the adversary is oblivious, the location of these writes is uncorrelated with their ordering. If we assume that the adversary is trying to
maximize the number of survivors, its best strategy is to allow each process
to read immediately after writing, as delaying this read can only increase the
probability that A[r + 1] is nonzero. So in computing Xi , we are counting
the number of writes to A[i] before the first write to A[i + 1]. Lets ignore
all writes to other registers; then the j-th write to either of A[i] or A[i + 1]
has a conditional probability of 2/3 of landing on A[i] and 1/3 on A[i + 1].
We are thus looking at a geometric distribution with parameter 1/3, which
has expectation 3.

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET205

Combining these two bounds gives E [Xi ] min(3, 2i ). So then
E [survivors]

min(3, n 2i )

i=1

= 3 lg n + O(1),
because once n 2i drops below 3, the remaining terms form a geometric
series.
Like square root, logarithm is concave, so Jensens inequality applies here
as well. So O(log n) rounds of Algorithm 23.7 reduces us to an expected
constant number of survivors, which can then be fed to RatRace.
With an adaptive adversary, all of the sifter-based test-and-sets fail
badly: in this particular case, an adaptive adversary can sort the processes
in order of increasing write location so that every process survives. The best
known n-process test-and-set for an adaptive adversary is still a tree of 2process randomized test-and-sets, as in the Afek et al. [AWW93] algorithm
described in 22.2. Whether O(log n) expected steps is in fact necessary
is still open (as is the exact complexity of test-and-set with an oblivious
adversary).

23.8

Space bounds

A classic result of Fich, Herlihy, and Shavit [FHS98] shows that ( n) registers are needed to solve consensus even under the very weak requirement of
nondeterministic solo termination, which says that for every reachable
configuration and every process p, there exists some continuation of the execution in which the protocol terminates with only p running. The best known
upper bound is the trivial none single-writer register per processsince
any multi-writer register algorithm can be translated into a single-writer algorithm and (assuming wide enough registers) multiple registers of a single
process can be combined into one.
There has been very little progress in closing the gap between these
two bounds since the original conference version of the FHS paper from
1993, although very recently, Giakkoupis et al. [GHHW13] have shown a

surprising O( n)-space algorithm for the closely related problem of leader

election, which is basically test-and-set without guaranteeing linearizability.
The main difference between leader election and consensus is that in consensus every process learns the identity of the winner, instead of just whether

CHAPTER 23. RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS AND TEST-AND-SET206

it personally won or lost. It is not clear whether the techniques used for this
problem could carry across to consensus.

Chapter 24

Renaming
We will start by following the presentation in [AW04, 16.3]. This mostly describes results of the original paper of Attiya et al. [ABND+ 90] that defined
the renaming problem and gave a solution for message-passing; however, its
now more common to treat renaming in the context of shared-memory, so
we will follow Attiya and Welchs translation of these results to a sharedmemory setting.

24.1

Renaming

In the renaming problem, we have n processes, each starts with a name

from some huge namespace, and wed like to assign them each unique names
from a much smaller namespace. The main application is allowing us to run
algorithms that assume that the processes are given contiguous numbers,
e.g. the various collect or atomic snapshot algorithms in which each process
is assigned a unique register and we have to read all of the registers. With
renaming, instead of reading a huge pile of registers in order to find the few
that are actually used, we can map the processes down to a much smaller
set.
Formally, we have a decision problem where each process has input xi
(its original name) and output yi , with the requirements:
Termination Every nonfaulty process eventually decides.
Uniqueness If pi 6= pj , then yi 6= yj .
Anonymity The code executed by any process depends only on its input
xi : for any execution of processes p1 . . . pn with inputs x1 . . . xn , and
207

CHAPTER 24. RENAMING

208

any permutation of [1 . . . n], there is a corresponding execution of

processes p(1) . . . p(n) with inputs x1 . . . xn in which p(i) performs
exactly the same operations as pi and obtains the same output yi .
The last condition is like non-triviality for consensus: it excludes algorithms where pi just returns i in all executions. Typically we do not have
to do much to prove anonymity other than observing that all processes are
running the same code.
We will be considering renaming in a shared-memory system, where we
only have atomic registers to work with.

24.2

Performance

Conventions on counting processes:

N = number of possible original names.
n = maximum number of processes.
k = number of processes that actually execute the algorithm.
Ideally, wed like any performance measures we get to depend on k alone
if possible (giving an adaptive algorithm). Next best would be something
polynomial in n and k. Anything involving N is bad.
Wed also like to minimize the size of the output namespace. How well
we can do this depends on what assumptions we make. For deterministic
algorithms using only read-write registers, a lower bound due to Herlihy and
Shavit [HS99] shows that we cant get fewer than 2n 1 names for general
n.1 Our target thus will be exactly 2n 1 output names if possible, or 2k 1
if we are trying to be adaptive. For randomized algorithm, it is possible to
solve strong or tight renaming, where the size of the namespace is exactly
k; well see how to do this in 24.5.
A small note on bounds: There is a lot of variation in the literature on
how bounds on the size of the output namespace are stated. The original
Herlihy-Shavit lower bound [HS99] says that there is no general renaming
algorithm that uses 2n names for n + 1 processes; in other words, any nprocess algorithm uses at least 2n 1 names. Many subsequent papers
1

This lower bound was further refined by Castaeda and Rajsbaum [CR08], who show
that 2n 2 (but no less!) is possible for certain special values of n; all of these lower
bounds make extensive use of combinatorial topology, so we wont try to present them
here.

CHAPTER 24. RENAMING

209

discussing lower bounds on the namespace follow the approach of Herlihy and
Shavit and quote lower bounds that are generally 2 higher than the minimum
number of names needed for n processes. This requires a certain amount of
translation when comparing these lower bounds with upper bounds, which
use the more natural convention.

24.3

Order-preserving renaming

Before we jump into upper bounds, lets do an easy lower bound from the
Attiya et al. paper [ABND+ 90]. This bound works on a variant of renaming
called order-preserving renaming, where we require that yi < yj whenever xi < xj . Unfortunately, this requires a very large output namespace:
with t failures, any asynchronous algorithm for order-preserving renaming
requires 2t (n t + 1) 1 possible output names. This lower bound applies
regardless of the model, as long as some processes may start after other
processes have already been assigned names.
For the wait-free case, we have t = n 1, and the bound becomes just
n
2 1. This is a simpler case than the general t-failure case, but the essential
idea is the same: if Ive only seen a few of the processes, I need to leave room
for the others.
Theorem 24.3.1. There is no order-preserving renaming algorithm for n
processes using fewer than 2n 1 names.
Proof. By induction on n. For n = 1, we use 21 1 = 1 names; this is the
base case. For larger n, suppose we use m names, and consider an execution
in which one process pn runs to completion first. This consumes one name
yn and leaves k names less than yn and m k 1 names greater than yn . By
setting all the inputs xi for i < n either less than xn or greater than xn , we
can force the remaining processes to choose from the remaining k or mk1
names. Applying the induction hypothesis, this gives k 2n1 1 and
mk1 2n1 1, so m = k+(mk1)+1 2(2n1 1)+1 = 2n 1.

24.4

Deterministic renaming

In deterministic renaming, we cant use randomization, and may or may

not have any primitives stronger than atomic registers. With just atomic
registers, we can only solve loose renaming; with test-and-set, we can solve
tight renaming. In this section, we describe some basic algorithms for deterministic renaming.

CHAPTER 24. RENAMING

24.4.1

210

Wait-free renaming with 2n 1 names

Here we use Algorithm 55 from [AW04], which is an adaptation to shared

memory of the message-passing renaming algorithm of [ABND+ 90]. One
odd feature of the algorithm is that, as written, it is not anonymous: processes communicate using an atomic snapshot object and use their process
ids to select which component of the snapshot array to write to. But if we
think of the process ids used in the algorithm as the inputs xi rather than
the actual process ids i, then everything works. The version given in Algorithm 24.1 makes this substitution explicit, by treating the original name i
as the input.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

9
10

procedure getName()
s1
while true do
a[i] s
view snapshot(a)
if view[j] = s for some j then
r |{j : view[j] 6= j i}|
s r-th positive integer not in
{view[j] : j 6= i view[j] = }
else
return s
Algorithm 24.1: Wait-free deterministic renaming

The array a holds proposed names for each process (indexed by the
original names), or for processes that have not proposed a name yet. If a
process proposes a name and finds that no other process has proposed the
same name, it takes it; otherwise it chooses a new name by first computing
its rank r among the active processes and then choosing the r-th smallest
name that hasnt been proposed by another process. Because the rank is at
most n and there are at most n 1 names proposed by the other processes,
this always gives proposed names in the range [1 . . . 2n 1]. But it remains
to show that the algorithm satisfies uniqueness and termination.
For uniqueness, consider two process with original names i and j. Suppose that i and j both decide on s. Then i sees a view in which a[i] = s and
a[j] 6= s, after which it no longer updates a[i]. Similarly, j sees a view in
which a[j] = s and a[i] 6= s, after which it no longer updates a[j]. If is view
is obtained first, then j cant see a[i] 6= s, but the same holds if js view is

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211

obtained first. So in either case we get a contradiction, proving uniqueness.

Termination is a bit trickier. Here we argue that no process can run
forever without picking a name, by showing that if we have a set of processes
that are doing this, the one with smallest original name eventually picks a
name. More formally, call a process trying if it runs for infinitely many steps
without choosing a name. Then in any execution with at least one trying
process, eventually we reach a configuration where all processes have either
finished or are trying. In some subsequent configuration, all the processes
have written to the a array at least once; from this point on, the set of nonnull positions in aand thus the rank each process computes for itselfis
stable.
Starting from some such stable configuration, look at the trying process
i with the smallest original name, and suppose it has rank r. Let F =
{z1 < z2 . . . } be the set of free names that are not proposed in a by any of
the finished processes. Observe that no trying process j 6= i ever proposes
a name in {z1 . . . zr }, because any such process has rank greater than r.
This leaves zr open for i to claim, provided the other names in {z1 . . . zr }
eventually become free. But this will happen, because only trying processes
may have proposed these names (early on in the execution, when the finished
processes hadnt finished yet), and the trying processes eventually propose
new names that are not in this range. So eventually process i proposes zr ,
sees no conflict, and finishes, contradicting the assumption that it is trying.
Note that we havent proved any complexity bounds on this algorithm at
all, but we know that the snapshot alone takes at least (N ) time and space.
Brodksy et al. [BEW11] cite a paper of Bar-Noy and Dolev [BND89] as giving
a shared-memory version of [ABND+ 90] with complexity O(n4n ); they also
give algorithms and pointers to algorithms with much better complexity.

24.4.2

Long-lived renaming

In long-lived renaming a process can release a name for later use by other
processes (or the same process, if it happens to run choose-name again). Now
the bound on the number of names needed is 2k1, where k is the maximum
number of concurrently active processes. Algorithm 24.1 can be converted
to a long-lived renaming algorithm by adding the releaseName procedure
given in Algorithm 24.2. This just erases the processs proposed name, so
that some other process can claim it.
Here the termination requirement is weakened slightly, to say that some
process always makes progress in getName. It may be, however, that there
is some process that never successfully obtains a name, because it keeps

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1
2

212

procedure releaseName()
a[i]
Algorithm 24.2: Releasing a name

getting stepped on by other processes zipping in and out of getName and

releaseName.

24.4.3

Renaming without snapshots

Moir and Anderson [MA95] give a renaming protocol that is somewhat easier
to understand and doesnt require taking snapshots over huge arrays. A
downside is that the basic version requires k(k + 1)/2 names to handle k
active processes.
24.4.3.1

Splitters

The Moir-Anderson renaming protocol uses a network of splitters, which

we last saw providing a fast path for mutual exclusion in 17.4.2. Each
splitter is a widget, built from a pair of atomic registers, that assigns to
each processes that arrives at it the value right, down, or stop. As discussed
previously, the useful properties of splitters are that if at least one process
arrives at a splitter, then (a) at least one process returns right or stop; and
(b) at least one process returns down or stop; (c) at most one process returns
stop; and (d) any process that runs by itself returns stop.
We proved the last two properties in 17.4.2; well prove the first two
here. Another way of describing these properties is that of all the processes
that arrive at a splitter, some process doesnt go down and some process
doesnt go right. By arranging splitters in a grid, this property guarantees
that every row or column that gets at least one process gets to keep it
which means that with k processes, no process reaches row k + 1 or column
k + 1.
Algorithm 24.3 gives the implementation of a splitter (its identical to
Algorithm 17.5, but it will be convenient to have another copy here).
Lemma 24.4.1. If at least one process completes the splitter, at least one
process returns stop or right.
Proof. Suppose no process returns right; then every process sees open in
door, which means that every process writes its id to race before any process

CHAPTER 24. RENAMING

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

213

shared data:
atomic register race, big enough to hold an id, initially
atomic register door, big enough to hold a bit, initially open
procedure splitter(id)
race id
if door = closed then
return right
door closed
if race = id then
return stop
else
return down
Algorithm 24.3: Implementation of a splitter

closes the door. Some process writes its id last: this process will see its own
id in race and return stop.
Lemma 24.4.2. If at least one process completes the splitter, at least one
process returns stop or down.
Proof. First observe that if no process ever writes to door, then no process
completes the splitter, because the only way a process can finish the splitter
without writing to door is if it sees closed when it reads door (which must
have been written by some other process). So if at least one process finishes,
at least one process writes to door. Let p be any such process. From the
code, having written door, it has already passed up the chance to return
right; thus it either returns stop or down.
24.4.3.2

Splitters in a grid

Now build an m-by-m triangular grid of splitters, arranged as rows 0 . . . m1

and columns 0 . . . m 1, where a splitter appears in each position (r, c)
with r + c m 1 (see Figure 24.1 for an example; this
figure is taken

from [Asp10]). Assign a distinct name to each of the m
splitters
in this
2
grid. To obtain a name, a process starts at (r, c) = (0, 0), and repeatedly
executes the splitter at its current position (r, c). If the splitter returns right,
it moves to (r, c + 1); if down, it moves to (r + 1, c); if stop, it stops, and
returns the name of its current splitter. This gives each name to at most

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214

Figure 24.1: A 6 6 Moir-Anderson grid

one process (by Lemma 17.4.3); we also have to show that if at most m
processes enter the grid, every process stops at some splitter.
The argument for this is simple. Suppose some process p leaves the
grid on one of the 2m output wires. Look at the path it takes to get there
(see Figure 24.2, also taken from [Asp10]). Each splitter on this path must
handle at least two processes (or p would have stopped at that splitter, by
Lemma 17.4.4). So some other process leaves on the other output wire, either
right or down. If we draw a path from each of these wires that continues right
or down to the end of the grid, then along each of these m disjoint paths
either some splitter stops a process, or some process reaches a final output
wire, each of which is at a distinct splitter. But this gives m processes in
addition to p, for a total of m + 1 processes. It follows that:
Theorem 24.4.3. An m m Moir-Anderson grid solves renaming for up
to m processes.
The time complexity of the algorithm is O(m): Each process spends at
most 4 operations on each splitter, and no process goes through more than
2m splitters. In general, any splitter network will take at least n steps to
stop n processes, because the adversary can run them all together in a horde
that drops only one process at each splitter.
If we dont know k in advance, we can still guarantee names of size O(k 2)
by carefully arranging them so that each k-by-k subgrid contains the first k2
names. This gives an adaptive renaming algorithm (although the namespace

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215

Figure 24.2: Path taken by a single process through a 6 6 Moir-Anderson

grid (heavy path), and the 6 disjoint paths it spawns (dashed paths).
size is pretty high). We still have to choose our grid to be large enough for
the largest k we might actually encounter; the resulting space complexity is
O(n2 ).
With a slightly more clever arrangement of the splitters, it is possible to
reduce the space complexity to O(n3/2 ) [Asp10]. Whether further reductions
are possible is an open problem. Note however that linear time complexity
makes splitter networks uncompetitive with much faster randomized algorithms (as well see in 24.5), so this may not be a very important open
problem.

24.4.4

Getting to 2n 1 names in polynomial space

From before, we have an algorithm that will get 2n 1 names for n processes out of N possible processes when run using O(N ) space (for the
enormous snapshots). To turn this into a bounded-space algorithm, run
Moir-Anderson first to get down to (k 2 ) names, then run the previous
algorithm (in (n2 ) space) using these new names as the original names.
Since we didnt prove anything about time complexity of the humongoussnapshot algorithm, we cant say much about the time complexity of this
combined one. Moir and Anderson suggest instead using an O(N k 2 ) algorithm of Borowsky and Gafni to get O(k 4 ) time for the combined algorithm.
This is close to the best known: a later paper by Afek and Merritt [AM99]

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216

holds the current record for deterministic adaptive renaming into 2k 1

names at O(k 2 ) individual steps. On the lower bound side, it is known that
(k) is a lower bound on the individual steps of any renaming protocol with
a polynomial output namespace [AAGG11].

24.4.5

Renaming with test-and-set

Moir and Anderson give a simple renaming algorithm based on test-and-set

that is strong (k processes are assigned exactly the names 1 . . . k), adaptive
(the time complexity to acquire a name is O(k)), and long-lived, which
means that a process can release its name and the name will be available to
processes that arrive later. In fact, the resulting algorithm gives long-lived
strong renaming, meaning that the set of names in use will always be no
larger than the set of processes that have started to acquire a name and not
yet finished releasing one; this is a little stronger than just saying that the
algorithm is strong and that it is long-lived separately.
The algorithm is simple: we have a line of test-and-set bits T [1] . . . T [n].
To acquire a name, a process starts at T [1] and attempts to win each testand-set until it succeeds; whichever T [i] it wins gives it name i. To release
a name, a process releases the test-and-set.
Without the releases, the same mechanism gives fetch-and-increment [AWW93].
Fetch-and-increment by itself solves tight renaming (although not long-lived
renaming, since there is no way to release a name).

24.5

Randomized renaming

With randomization, we can beat both the 2k 1 lower bound on the size of
the output namespace from [HS99] and the (k) lower bound on individual
work from [AAGG11], achieving strong renaming with O(log k) expected
individual work [AACH+ 11].
The basic idea is that we can use randomization for load balancing,
where we avoid the problem of having an army of processes marching together with only a few peeling off at a time (as in splitter networks) by
having the processes split up based on random choices. For example, if each
process generates a random name consisting of 2 dlg ne bits, then it is reasonably likely that every process gets a unique name in a namespace of size
O(n2 ) (we cant hope for less than O(n2 ) because of the birthday paradox). But we want all processes to be guaranteed to have unique names, so
we need some more machinery.

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217

We also need the processes to have initial names; if they dont, there
is always some nonzero probability that two identical processes will flip
their coins in exactly the same way and end up with the same name.
This observation was formalized by Buhrman, Panconesi, Silvestri, and
Vitnyi [BPSV06].

24.5.1

Randomized splitters

Attiya, Kuhn, Plaxton, Wattenhofer, and Wattenhofer [AKP+ 06] suggested

the use of randomized splitters in the context of another problem (adaptive collect) that is closely related to renaming.
A randomized splitter is just like a regular splitter, except that if a
process doesnt stop it flips a coin to decide whether to go right or down.
Randomized splitters are nice because they usually split better than deterministic splitters: if k processesreach a randomized splitter, with high
probability no more than k/2 + O( k log k) will leave on either output wire.
Its not hard to show that a binary tree of these things of depth 2 dlg ne
stops all but a constant expected number of processes on average;2 processes
that dont stop can be dropped into a backup renaming algorithm (MoirAnderson, for example) only a constant increase in expected individual work.
Furthermore, the binary tree of randomized splitters is adaptive; if only
k processes show up, we only need O(log k) levels levels on average to split
them up. This gives renaming into a namespace with expected size O(k 2 )
in O(log k) expected individual steps.

24.5.2

Randomized test-and-set plus sampling

Subsequent work by Alistarh et al. [AAG+ 10] showed how some of the same
ideas could be used to get strong renaming, where the output namespace has
size exactly n (note this is not adaptive; another result in the same paper
gives adaptive renaming, but its not strong). There are two pieces to this
result: an implementation of randomized test-and-set called RatRace, and
a sampling procedure for getting names called ReShuffle.
The RatRace protocol implements a randomized test-and-set with O(log k)
expected individual work. The essential idea is to use a tree of randomized
splitters to assign names, then have processes walk back up the same tree
2

The proof is to consider the expected number of pairs

of processes that flip their coins
the same way for all 2 dlg ne steps. This is at most n2 n2 < 1/2, so on average at most 1
process escapes the tree, giving (by symmetry) at most a 1/n chance that any particular
process escapes. Making the tree deeper can give any polynomial fraction of escapees
while still keeping O(log n) layers.

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218

attempting to win a 3-process randomized test-and-set at each node (there

are 3 processes, because in addition to the winners of each subtree, we may
also have a process that stopped on that node in the renaming step); this
test-and-set is just a very small binary tree of 2-process test-and-sets implemented using the algorithm of Tromp and Vitnyi [TV02]. A gate bit is
added at the top as in the test-and-set protocol of Afek et al. [AGTV92] to
get linearizability.
Once we have test-and-set, we could get strong renaming using a linear
array of test-and-sets as suggested by Moir and Anderson [MA95], but its
more efficient to use the randomization to spread the processes out. In
the ReShuffle protocol, each process chooses a name in the range [1 . . . n]
uniformly at random, and attempts to win a test-and-set guarding that
name. If it doesnt work, it tries again. Alistarh et al. show that this method
produces unique names for everybody in O(n log4 n) total steps with high
probability. The individual step complexity of this algorithm, however, is
not very good: there is likely to be some unlucky process that needs (n)
probes (at an expected cost of (log n) steps each) to find an empty slot.

24.5.3

Renaming with sorting networks

A later paper by Alistarh et al. [AACH+ 11] reduces the cost of renaming
still further, getting O(log k) expected individual step complexity for acquiring a name. The resulting algorithm is both adaptive and strong: with k
processes, only names 1 through k are used. Well describe the non-adaptive
version here.
The basic idea is to build a sorting network out of test-and-sets; the resulting structure, called a renaming network, routes each process through
a sequence of test-and-sets to a unique output wire. Unlike a splitter network, a renaming network uses the stronger properties of test-and-set to
guarantee that (once the dust settles) only the lowest-numbered output wires
are chosen; this gives strong renaming.
24.5.3.1

Sorting networks

A sorting network is a kind of parallel sorting algorithm that proceeds in

synchronous rounds, where in each round the elements of an array at certain
fixed positions are paired off and swapped if they are out of order. The
difference between a sorting network and a standard comparison-based sort
is that the choice of which positions to compare at each step is static, and
doesnt depend on the outcome of previous comparisons; also, the only effect

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219

Figure 24.3: A sorting network

of a comparison is possibly swapping the two values that were compared.
Sorting networks are drawn as in Figure 24.3. Each horizontal line or
wire corresponds to a position in the array. The vertical lines are comparators that compare two values coming in from the left and swap the
larger value to the bottom. A network of comparators is a sorting network
if the sequences of output values is always sorted no matter what the order
of values on the inputs is.
The depth of a sorting network is the maximum number of comparators
on any path from an input to an output. The width is the number of wires;
equivalently, the number of values the network can sort. The sorting network
in Figure 24.3 has depth 3 and width 4.
Explicit constructions of sorting networks with width n and depth O(log2 n)
are known [Bat68]. It is also known that sorting networks with depth
O(log n) exist [AKS83], but no explicit construction of such a network is
known.
24.5.3.2

Renaming networks

To turn a sorting network into a renaming network, we replace the comparators with test-and-set bits, and allow processes to walk through the network
asynchronously. This is similar to an earlier mechanism called a counting
network [AHS94], which used certain special classes of sorting networks as
counters, but here any sorting network works.
Each process starts on a separate input wire, and we maintain the in-

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220

variant that at most one process ever traverses a wire. It follows that each
test-and-set bit is only used by two processes. The first process to reach the
test-and-set bit is sent out the lower output, while the second is sent out the
upper output. If we imagine each process that participates in the protocol
as a one and each process that doesnt as a zero, the test-and-set bit acts
as a comparator: if no processes show up on either input (two zeros), no
processes leave (two zeros again); if processes show up on both inputs (two
ones), processes leave on both (two ones again); and if only one process
ever shows up (a zero and a one), it leaves on the bottom output (zero and
one, sorted). Because the original sorting network sorts all the ones to the
bottom output wires, the corresponding renaming network sorts all the processes that arrive to the bottom outputs. Label these outputs starting at 1
at the bottom to get renaming.
Since each test-and-set involves at most two processes, we can carry them
out in O(1) expected register operations using, for example, the protocol of
Tromp and Vitnyi [TV02]. The expected cost for a process to acquire a
name is then O(log n) (using an AKS sorting network). A more complicated
construction in the Alistarh et al. paper shows how to make this adaptive,
giving an expected cost of O(log k) instead.
The use of test-and-sets to route processes to particular names is similar to the line of test-and-sets proposed by Moir and Anderson [MA95] as
described in 24.4.5. Some differences between that protocol and renaming
networks is that renaming networks do not by themselves give fetch-andincrement (although Alistarh et al. show how to build fetch-and-increment
on top of renaming networks at a small additional cost), and renaming networks do not provide any mechanism for releasing names. The question of
whether it is possible to get cheap long-lived strong renaming is still open.

24.5.4

Randomized loose renaming

Loose renaming should be easier than strong renaming, and using a randomized algorithm it essentially reduces to randomized load balancing. A basic
approach is to use 2n names, and guard each with a test-and-set; because
less than half of the names are taken at any given time, each process gets a
name after O(1) tries and the most expensive renaming operation over all
n processes takes O(log n) expected steps.
A more sophisticated version of this strategy, which appears in [AAGW13],
uses n(1 + ) output names to get O(log log n) maximum steps. The intuition for why this works is if n processes independently choose one of cn
names uniformly at random, then the expected number of collisionspairs

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221

of processes that choose the same nameis n2 /cn, or about n/2c. This
may seem like only a constant-factor improvement, but if we instead look at
the ratio between the survivors n/2c and the number of allocated names cn,
we have now moved from 1/c to 1/2c2 . The 2 gives us some room to reduce
the number of names in the next round, to cn/2, say, while still keeping a
1/c2 ratio of survivors to names.
So the actual renaming algorithm consists of allocating cn/2i names to
round i, and squaring the ratio of survivors to names in each rounds. It only
takes O(log log n) rounds to knock the ratio of survivors to names below 1/n,
so at this point it is likely that all processes will have finished. At the same
time, the sum over all rounds of the allocated names forms a geometric
series, so only O(n) names are needed altogether.
Swept under the carpet here is a lot of careful analysis of the probabilities. Unlike what happens with sifters (see 23.6), Jensens inequality goes
the wrong way here, so some additional technical tricks are needed (see the
paper for details). But the result is that only O(log log n) rounds are to
assign every process a name with high probability, which is the best value
currently known.
There is a rather weak lower bound in the Alistarh et al. paper that
shows that (log log n) steps are needed for some process in the worst case,
under the assumption that the renaming algorithm uses only test-and-set
objects and that a process acquires a name as soon as it wins some test-andset object. This does not give a lower bound on the problem in general, and
indeed the renaming-network based algorithms discussed previously do not
have this property. So the question of the exact complexity of randomized
loose renaming is still open.

Chapter 25

Software transactional
memory
1
Software transactional memory, or STM for short, goes back to
Shavit and Touitou [ST97] based on earlier proposals for hardware support
for transactions by Herlihy and Moss [HM93]. Recently very popular in
programming language circles. Well give a high-level description of the
Shavit and Touitou results; for full details see the actual paper.
We start with the basic idea of a transaction. In a transaction, I read a
bunch of registers and update their values, and all of these operations appear
to be atomic, in the sense that the transaction either happens completely or
not at all, and serializes with other transactions as if each occurred instantaneously. Our goal is to implement this with minimal hardware support,
and use it for everything.
Generally we only consider static transactions where the set of memory locations accessed is known in advance, as opposed to dynamic transactions where it may vary depending on what we read (for example, maybe
we have to follow pointers through some data structure). Static transactions
are easier because we can treat them as multi-word read-modify-write.
Implementations are usually non-blocking: some infinite stream of
transactions succeed, but not necessarily yours. This excludes the simplest method based on acquiring locks, since we have to keep going even if
a lock-holder crashes, but is weaker than wait-freedom since we can have
starvation.

222

CHAPTER 25. SOFTWARE TRANSACTIONAL MEMORY

25.1

223

Motivation

Some selling points for software transactional memory:

1. We get atomic operations without having to use our brains much.
Unlike hand-coded atomic snapshots, counters, queues, etc., we have
a universal construction that converts any sequential data structure
built on top of ordinary memory into a concurrent data structure.
This is useful since most programmers dont have very big brains. We
also avoid burdening the programmer with having to remember to lock
things.
2. We can build large shared data structures with the possibility of concurrent access. For example, we can implement atomic snapshots so
that concurrent updates dont interfere with each other, or an atomic
queue where enqueues and dequeues can happen concurrently so long
as the queue always has a few elements in it to separate the enqueuers
and dequeuers.
3. We can execute atomic operations that span multiple data structures,
even if the data structures werent originally designed to work together,
provided they are all implemented using the STM mechanism. This
is handy in classic database-like settings, as when we want to take $5
from my bank account and put it in yours.
On the other hand, we now have to deal with the possibility that operations may fail. There is a price to everything.

25.2

Basic approaches

Locking (not non-blocking). Acquire either a single lock for all of

memory (doesnt allow much concurrency) or a separate lock for each
memory location accessed. The second approach can lead to deadlock
if we arent careful, but we can prove that if every transaction acquires
locks in the same order (e.g., by increasing memory address), then
we never get stuck: we can order the processes by the highest lock
acquired, and somebody comes out on top. Note that acquiring locks
in increasing order means that I have to know which locks I want before
I acquire any of them, which may rule out dynamic transactions.
Single-pointer compare-and-swap (called Herlihys method in [ST97],
because of its earlier use for constructing concurrent data structures

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224

by Herlihy [Her93]). All access to the data structure goes through

a pointer in a CAS. To execute a transaction, I make my own copy
of the data structure, update it, and then attempt to redirect the
pointer. Advantages: trivial to prove that the result is linearizable
(the pointer swing is an atomic action) and non-blocking (somebody
wins the CAS); also, the method allows dynamic transactions (since
you can do anything you want to your copy). Disadvantages: Theres
a high overhead of the many copies,1 and the single-pointer bottleneck
limits concurrency even when two transactions use disjoint parts of
memory.
Multiword RMW: This is the approach suggested by Shavit and Touitou,
which most subsequent work follows. As usually implemented, it only
works for static transactions. The idea is that I write down what registers I plan to update and what I plan to do to them. I then attempt
to acquire all the registers. If I succeed, I update all the values, store
the old values, and go home. If I fail, its because somebody else already acquired one of the registers. Since I need to make sure that
somebody makes progress (I may be the only process left alive), Ill
help that other process finish its transaction if possible. Advantages:
allows concurrency between disjoint transactions. Disadvantages: requires implementing multi-word RMWin particular, requires that
any process be able to understand and simulate any other processs
transactions. Subsequent work often simplifies this to implementing
multi-word CAS, which is sufficient to do non-blocking multi-word
RMW since I can read all the registers I need (without any locking)
and then do a CAS to update them (which fails only if somebody else
succeeded).

25.3

Implementing multi-word RMW

Well give a sketchy description of Shavit and Touitous method [ST97],

which essentially follows the locking approach but allows other processes to
help dead ones so that locks are always released.
The synchronization primitive used is LL/SC: LL (load-linked) reads
a register and leaves our id attached to it, SC (store-conditional) writes a
register only if our id is still attached, and clears any other ids that might
1

This overhead can be reduced in many cases by sharing components, a subject that
has seen much work in the functional programming literature. See for example [Oka99].

CHAPTER 25. SOFTWARE TRANSACTIONAL MEMORY

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also be attached. Its easy to build a 1-register CAS (CAS1) out of this,
though Shavit and Touitou exploit some additional power of LL/SC.

25.3.1

Overlapping LL/SC

The particular trick that gets used in the Shavit-Touitou protocol is to

use two overlapping LL/SC pairs to do a CAS-like update on one memory
location while checking that another memory location hasnt changed. The
purpose of this is to allow multiple processes to work on the same transaction
(which requires the first CAS to avoid conflicts with other transactions) while
making sure that slow processes dont cause trouble by trying to complete
transactions that have already finished (the second check).
To see this in action, suppose we have a register r that we want to do
a CAS on, while checking that a second register status is (as opposed to
success or failure). If we execute the code fragment in Algorithm 25.1, it will
succeed only if nobody writes to status between its LL and SC and similarly
for r; if this occurs, then at the time of LL(r), we know that status = , and
we can linearize the write to r at this time if we restrict all access to r to
go through LL/SC.
1
2
3
4

if LL(status) = then
if LL(r) = oldValue then
if SC(status, ) = true then
SC(r, newValue)
Algorithm 25.1: Overlapping LL/SC

25.3.2

Representing a transaction

Transactions are represented by records rec. Each such record consists of a

status component that describes how far the transaction has gotten (needed
to coordinate cooperating processes), a version component that distinguishes
between versions that may reuse the same space (and that is used to shut
down the transaction when complete), a stable component that indicates
when the initialization is complete, an Op component that describes the
RMW to be performance, an array addresses[] of pointers to the arguments
to the RMW, and an array oldValues[] of old values at these addresses (for
the R part of the RWM). These are all initialized by the initiator of the

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transaction, who will be the only process working on the transaction until
it starts acquiring locks.

25.3.3

Executing a transaction

Here we give an overview of a transaction execution:

1. Initialize the record rec for the transaction. (Only the initiator does
this.)
2. Attempt to acquire ownership of registers in addresses[]. See the
AcquireOwnerships code in the paper for details. The essential idea is
that we want to set the field owner[r] for each memory location r that
we need to lock; this is done using an overlapping LL/SC as described
above so that we only set owner[r] if (a) r is currently unowned, and
(b) nothing has happened to rec.status or rec.version. Ownership is
acquired in order of increasing memory address; if we fail to acquire
ownership for some r, our transaction fails. In case of failure, we set
rec.status to failure and release all the locks weve acquired (checking
rec.version in the middle of each LL/SC so we dont release locks for
a later version using the same record). If we are the initiator of this
transaction, we will also go on to attempt to complete the transaction
that got in our way.
3. Do a LL on rec.status to see if AcquireOwnerships succeeded. If so,
update the memory, store the old results in oldValues, and release the
ownerships. If it failed, release ownership and help the next transaction
as described above.
Note that only an initiator helps; this avoids a long chain of helping
and limits the cost of each attempted transaction to the cost of doing two
full transactions, while (as shown below) still allowing some transaction to
finish.

25.3.4

Proof of linearizability

Intuition is:
Linearizability follows from the linearizability of the locking protocol:
acquiring ownership is equivalent to grabbing a lock, and updates occur only when all registers are locked.

CHAPTER 25. SOFTWARE TRANSACTIONAL MEMORY

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Complications come from (a) two or more processes trying to complete

the same transaction and (b) some process trying to complete an old
transaction that has already terminated. For the first part we just
make sure that the processes dont interfere with each other, e.g. I
am happy when trying to acquire a location if somebody else acquires
it for the same transaction. For the second part we have to check
rec.status and rec.version before doing just about anything. See the
pseudocode in the paper for details on how this is done.

25.3.5

Proof of non-blockingness

To show that the protocol is non-blocking we must show that if an unbounded number of transactions are attempted, one eventually succeeds.
First observe that in order to fail, a transaction must be blocked by another
transaction that acquired ownership of a higher-address location than it did;
eventually we run out of higher-address locations, so there is some transaction that doesnt fail. Of course, this transaction may not succeed (e.g.,
if its initiator dies), but either (a) it blocks some other transaction, and
that transactions initiator will complete it or die trying, or (b) it blocks no
future transactions. In the second case we can repeat the argument for the
n 1 surviving processes to show that some of them complete transactions,
ignoring the stalled transaction from case (b).

25.4

Improvements

One downside of the Shavit and Touitou protocol is that it uses LL/SC
very aggressively (e.g. with overlapping LL/SC operations) and uses nontrivial (though bounded, if you ignore the ever-increasing version numbers)
amounts of extra space. Subsequent work has aimed at knocking these down;
for example a paper by Harris, Fraser, and Pratt [HFP02] builds multiregister CAS out of single-register CAS with O(1) extra bits per register.
The proof of these later results can be quite involved; Harris et al, for
example, base their algorithm on an implementation of 2-register CAS whose
correctness has been verified only by machine (which may be a plus in some
views).

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228

Limitations

There has been a lot of practical work on STM designed to reduce overhead on real hardware, but theres still a fair bit of overhead. On the
theory side, a lower bound of Attiya, Hillel, and Milani [AHM09] shows that
any STM system that guarantees non-interference between non-overlapping
RMW transactions has the undesirable property of making read-only transactions as expensive as RMW transactions: this conflicts with the stated
goals of many practical STM implementations, where it is assumed that
most transactions will be read-only (and hopefully cheap). So there is quite
a bit of continuing research on finding the right trade-offs.

Chapter 26

Obstruction-freedom
1
The gold standard for shared-memory objects is wait-freedom: I can
finish my operation in a bounded number of steps no matter what anybody
else does. Like the gold standard in real life, this can be overly constraining.
So researchers have developed several weaker progress guarantees that are
nonetheless useful. The main ones are:
Lock-freedom An implementation is lock-free if infinitely many operations finish in any infinite execution. In simpler terms, somebody always makes progress, but maybe not you. (Also called non-blocking.)
Obstruction-freedom An implementation is obstruction-free if, starting from any reachable configuration, any process can finish in a
bounded number of steps if all of the other processes stop. This definition was proposed in 2003 by Herlihy, Luchangco, and Moir [HLM03].
In lower bounds (e.g., the Jayanti-Tan-Toueg bound described in Chapter 20) essentially the same property is often called solo-terminating.
Both of these properties exclude traditional lock-based algorithms, where
some process grabs a lock, updates the data structure, and then release the
lock; if this process halts, no more operations finish. Both properties are
also weaker than wait-freedom. It is not hard to show that lock-freedom is
a stronger condition that obstruction-freedom: given a lock-free implementation, if we can keep some single process running forever in isolation, we
get an infinite execution with only finitely many completed operations. So
we have a hierarchy: wait-free > lock-free > obstruction-free > locking.

229

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230

Why build obstruction-free algorithms?

The pitch is similar to the pitch for building locking algorithms: an obstructionfree algorithm might be simpler to design, implement, and reason about than
a more sophisticated algorithm with stronger properties. Unlike locking algorithms, an obstruction-free algorithm wont fail because some process dies
holding the lock; instead, it fails if more than one process runs the algorithm
at the same time. This possibility may be something we can avoid by building a contention manager, a high-level protocol that detects contention
and delays some processes to avoid it (say, using randomized exponential
back-off).

26.2

Examples

26.2.1

Lock-free implementations

Pretty much anything built using compare-and-swap or LL/SC ends up

being lock-free. A simple example would be a counter, where an increment
operation does
1
2

x LL(C)
SC(C, x + 1)

This is lock-free (the only way to prevent a store-conditional from succeeding is if some other store-conditional succeeds, giving infinitely many
successful increments) but not wait-free (I can starve). Its also obstructionfree, but since its already lock-free we dont care about that.

26.2.2

Double-collect snapshots

Similarly, suppose we are doing atomic snapshots. We know that there

exist wait-free implementations of atomic snapshots, but they are subtle
and confusing. So we want to do something simpler, and hope that we at
least get obstruction-freedom.
If we do double-collects, that is, we have updates just write to a register
and have snapshots repeatedly collect until they get two collects in a row
with the same values, then any snapshot that finishes is correct (assuming
no updaters ever write the same value twice, which we can enforce with
nonces). This isnt wait-free, because we can keep a snapshot going forever

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by doing a lot of updates. It is lock-free, because we have to keep doing

updates to make this happen.
We can make this merely obstruction-free if we work hard (there is no
reason to do this, but it illustrates the difference between lock-freedom
goodand obstruction-freedomnot so good). Suppose that every process
keeps a count of how many collects it has done in a register that is included
in other processs collects (but not its own). Then two concurrent scans can
stall each other forever (the implementation is not lock-free), but if only one
is running it completes two collects in O(n) operations without seeing any
changes (it is obstruction-free).

26.2.3

Software transactional memory

Similar things happen with software transactional memory (see Chapter 25).
Suppose that I have an implementation of multiword compare-and-swap, and
I want to carry out a transaction. I read all the values I need, then execute an
MCAS operation that only updates if these values have not changed. The
resulting algorithm is lock-free (if my transaction fails, its because some
update succeeded). If however I am not very clever and allow some values
to get written outside of transactions, then I might only be obstruction-free.

26.2.4

Obstruction-free test-and-set

Algorithm 26.1 gives an implementation of 2-process test-and-set from atomic

registers that is obstruction-free; this demonstrates that obstruction-freedom
lets us evade the wait-free impossibility results implied by the consensus hierarchy ([Her91b], discussed in Chapter 18).
The basic idea goes back to the racing counters technique used in
consensus protocols starting with Chor, Israeli, and Li [CIL94], and there is
some similarity to a classic randomized wait-free test-and-set due to Tromp
and Vitnyi [TV02]. Each process keeps a position x in memory that it
also stores from time to time in its register a[i]. If a process gets 2 steps
ahead of the other process (as observed by comparing x to a[i 1], it wins
the test-and-set; if a process falls one or more steps behind, it (eventually)
loses. To keep space down and guarantee termination in bounded time, all
values are tracked modulo 5.
Why this works: observe that whenever a process computes , x is equal
to a[i]; so is always an instantaneous snapshot of a[i] a[1 i]. If I observe
= 2 and return 0, your next read will either show you = 2 or = 1
(depending on whether you increment a[1 i] after my read). In the latter

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x0
while true do
x a[1 i]
if = 2 (mod 5) then
return 0
else if = 1 (mod 5) do
return 1
else
x (x + 1) mod 5
a[i] x

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Algorithm 26.1: Obstruction-free 2-process test-and-set

case, you return 1 immediately; in the former, you return after one more
increment (and more importantly, you cant return 0). Alternatively, if I
ever observe = 1, your next read will show you either = 1 or = 2;
in either case, you will eventually return 0. (We chose 5 as a modulus
because this is the smallest value that makes the cases = 2 and = 2
distinguishable.)
We can even show that this is linearizable, by considering a solo execution
in which the lone process takes two steps and returns 0 (with two processes,
solo executions are the only interesting case for linearizability).
However, Algorithm 26.1 is not wait-free or even lock-free: if both processes run in lockstep, they will see = 0 forever. But it is obstruction-free.
If I run by myself, then whatever value of I start with, I will see 1 or 2
after at most 6 operations.1
This gives an obstruction-free step complexity of 6, where the
obstruction-free step complexity is defined as the maximum number of operations any process can take after all other processes stop. Note that our
usual wait-free measures of step complexity dont make a lot of sense for
obstruction-free algorithms, as we can expect a sufficiently cruel adversary
to be able to run them up to whatever value he likes.
Building a tree of these objects as in 22.2 gives n-process test-and-set
with obstruction-free step complexity O(log n).
1

The worst case is where an increment by my fellow process leaves = 1 just before
my increment.

CHAPTER 26. OBSTRUCTION-FREEDOM

26.2.5

233

An obstruction-free deque

(We probably arent going to do this in class.)

So far we dont have any good examples of why we would want to be
obstruction-free if our algorithm is based on CAS. So lets describe the case
Herlihy et al. suggested.
A deque is a generalized queue that supports push and pop at both ends
(thus it can be used as either a queue or a stack, or both). A classic problem
in shared-memory objects is to build a deque where operations at one end of
the deque dont interfere with operations at the other end. While there exist
lock-free implementation with this property, there is a particularly simple
implementation using CAS that is only obstruction-free.
Heres the idea: we represent the deque as an infinitely-long array of
compare-and-swap registers (this is a simplification from the paper, which
gives a bounded implementation of a bounded deque). The middle of the
deque holds the actual contents. To the right of this region is an infinite
sequence of right null (RN) values, which are assumed never to appear as
a pushed value. To the left is a similar infinite sequence of left null (LN)
values. Some magical external mechanism (called an oracle in the paper)
allows processes to quickly find the first null value at either end of the nonnull region; the correctness of the protocol does not depend on the properties
of the oracle, except that it has to point to the right place at least some of
the time in a solo execution. We also assume that each cell holds a version
number whose only purpose is to detect when somebody has fiddled with
the cell while we arent looking (if we use LL/SC, we can drop this).
Code for rightPush and rightPop is given in Algorithm 26.2 (the code
for leftPush and leftPop is symmetric).
Its easy to see that in a solo execution, if the oracle doesnt lie, either
operation finishes and returns a plausible value after O(1) operations. So
the implementation is obstruction-free. But is it also correct?
To show that it is, we need to show that any execution leaves the deque
in a sane state, in particular that it preserves the invariant that the deque
consists of left-nulls followed by zero or more values followed by right-nulls,
and that the sequence of values in the queue is what it should be.
This requires a detailed case analysis of which operations interfere with
each other, which can be found in the original paper. But we can give some
intuition here. The two CAS operations in rightPush or rightPop succeed
only if neither register was modified between the preceding read and the
CAS. If both registers are unmodified at the time of the second CAS, then
the two CAS operations act like a single two-word CAS, which replaces the

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procedure rightPush(v)
while true do
k oracle(right)
prev a[k 1]
next a[k]
if prev.value 6= RN and next.value = RN then
if CAS(a[k 1], prev, [prev.value, prev.version + 1]) then
if CAS(a[k], next, [v, next.version + 1]) then
we win, go home

procedure rightPop()
while true do
k oracle(right)
cur a[k 1]
next a[k]
if cur.value 6= RN and next.value = RN then
if cur.value = LN and A[k 1] = cur then
return empty
else if CAS(a[k], next, [RN, next.version + 1]) do
if CAS(a[k 1], cur, [RN, cur.version + 1]) then
return cur.value
Algorithm 26.2: Obstruction-free deque

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previous values (top, RN) with (top, value) in rightPush or (top, value) with
(top, RN) in rightPop; in either case the operation preserves the invariant.
So the only way we get into trouble is if, for example, a rightPush does a
CAS on a[k 1] (verifying that it is unmodified and incrementing the version
number), but then some other operation changes a[k 1] before the CAS on
a[k]. If this other operation is also a rightPush, we are happy, because it
must have the same value for k (otherwise it would have failed when it saw
a non-null in a[k 1]), and only one of the two right-pushes will succeed
in applying the CAS to a[k]. If the other operation is a rightPop, then it
can only change a[k 1] after updating a[k]; but in this case the update to
a[k] prevents the original right-push from changing a[k]. With some more
tedious effort we can similarly show that any interference from leftPush or
leftPop either causes the interfering operation or the original operation to
fail. This covers 4 of the 16 cases we need to consider. The remaining cases
will be brushed under the carpet to avoid further suffering.

26.3

Boosting obstruction-freedom to wait-freedom

1
Naturally, having an obstruction-free implementation of some object is
not very helpful if we cant guarantee that some process eventually gets
its unobstructed solo execution. In general, we cant expect to be able
to do this without additional assumptions; for example, if we could, we
could solve consensus using a long sequence of adopt-commit objects with
no randomization at all.2 So we need to make some sort of assumption
about timing, or find somebody else who has already figured out the right
assumption to make.
Those somebodies turn out to be Faith Ellen Fich, Victor Luchangco,
Mark Moir, and Nir Shavit, who give an algorithm for boosting obstructionfreedom to wait-freedom [FLMS05]. The timing assumption is unknownbound semisynchrony, which means that in any execution there is some
maximum ratio R between the shortest and longest time interval between
any two consecutive steps of the same non-faulty process, but the processes
dont know what this ratio is.3 In particular, if I can execute more than R
2

This fact was observed by Herlihy et al. [HLM03] in their original obstruction-free
paper; it also implies that there exists a universal obstruction-free implementation of
anything based on Herlihys universal construction.
3
This is a much older model, which goes back to a famous paper of Dwork, Lynch, and
Stockmeyer [DLS88].

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236

steps without you doing anything, I can reasonably conclude that you are
deadthe semisynchrony assumption thus acts as a failure detector.
The fact that R is unknown might seem to be an impediment to using
this failure detector, but we can get around this. The idea is to start with
a small guess for R; if a process is suspected but then wakes up again, we
increment the guess. Eventually, the guessed value is larger than the correct
value, so no live process will be falsely suspected after this point. Formally,
this gives an eventually perfect (P ) failure detector, although the algorithm
does not specifically use the failure detector abstraction.
To arrange for a solo execution, when a process detects a conflict (because its operation didnt finish quickly), it enters into a panic mode where
processes take turns trying to finish unmolested. A fetch-and-increment register is used as a timestamp generator, and only the process with the smallest
timestamp gets to proceed. However, if this process is too sluggish, other
processes may give up and overwrite its low timestamp with , temporarily
ending its turn. If the sluggish process is in fact alive, it can restore its low
timestamp and kill everybody else, allowing it to make progress until some
other process declares it dead again.
The simulation works because eventually the mechanism for detecting
dead processes stops suspecting live ones (using the technique described
above), so the live process with the winning timestamp finishes its operation
without interference. This allows the next process to proceed, and eventually
all live processes complete any operation they start, giving the wait-free
property.
The actual code is in Algorithm 26.3. Its a rather long algorithm but
most of the details are just bookkeeping.
The preamble before entering PANIC mode is a fast-path computation
that allows a process that actually is running in isolation to skip testing
any timestamps or doing any extra work (except for the one register read of
PANIC). The assumption is that the constant B is set high enough that any
process generally will finish its operation in B steps without interference. If
there is interference, then the timestamp-based mechanism kicks in: we grab
a timestamp out of the convenient fetch-and-add register and start slugging
it out with the other processes.
(A side note: while the algorithm as presented in the paper assumes a
fetch-and-add register, any timestamp generator that delivers increasing values over time will work. So if we want to limit ourselves to atomic registers,
we could generate timestamps by taking snapshots of previous timestamps,
adding 1, and appending process ids for tie-breaking.)
Once I have a timestamp, I try to knock all the higher-timestamp pro-

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if PANIC then
execute up to B steps of the underlying algorithm
if we are done then return
PANIC true // enter panic mode
myTimestamp fetchAndIncrement()
A[i] 1 // reset my activity counter
while true do
T [i] myTimestamp
minTimestamp myTimestamp; winner i
for j 1 . . . n, j 6= i do
otherTimestamp T [j]
if otherTimestamp < minTimestamp then
T [winner] // not looking so winning any more
minTimestamp otherTimestamp; winner j
else if otherTimestamp < do
T [j]
if i = winner then
repeat
execute up to B steps of the underlying algorithm
if we are done then
T [i]
PANIC false
return
else
A[i] A[i] + 1
PANIC true
until T [i] =
repeat
a A[winner]
wait a steps
winnerTimestamp T [winner]
until a = A[winner] or winnerTimestamp 6= minTimestamp
if winnerTimestamp = minTimestamp then
T [winner] // kill winner for inactivity
Algorithm 26.3: Obstruction-freedom booster from [FLMS05]

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cesses out of the way (by writing to their timestamp registers). If I see a
smaller timestamp than my own, Ill drop out myself (T [i] ), and fight
on behalf of its owner instead. At the end of the j loop, either Ive decided
I am the winner, in which case I try to finish my operation (periodically
checking T [i] to see if Ive been booted), or Ive decided somebody else is
the winner, in which case I watch them closely and try to shut them down
if they are too slow (T [winner] ). I detect slow processes by inactivity
in A[winner]; similarly, I signal my own activity by incrementing A[i]. The
value in A[i] is also used as an increasing guess for the time between increments of A[i]; eventually this exceeds the R(B + O(1)) operations that I
execute between incrementing it.
We still need to prove that this all works. The essential idea is to show
that whatever process has the lowest timestamp finishes in a bounded number of steps. To do so, we need to show that other processes wont be
fighting it in the underlying algorithm. Call a process active if it is in the
loop guarded by the if i = winner statement. Lemma 1 from the paper
states:
Lemma 26.3.1 ([FLMS05, Lemma 1]). If processes i and j are both active,
then T [i] = or T [j] = .
Proof. Assume without loss of generality that i last set T [i] to myTimestamp
in the main loop after j last set T [j]. In order to reach the active loop, i
must read T [j]. Either T [j] = at this time (and we are done, since only j
can set T [j] < ), or T [j] is greater than is timestamp (or else i wouldnt
think its the winner). In the second case, i sets T [j] = before entering
the active loop, and again the claim holds.
The next step is to show that if there is some process i with a minimum
timestamp that executes infinitely many operations, it increments A[i] infinitely often (thus eventually making the failure detector stop suspecting
it). This gives us Lemma 2 from the paper:
Lemma 26.3.2 ([FLMS05, Lemma 2]). Consider the set of all processes that
execute infinitely many operations without completing an operation. Suppose
this set is non-empty, and let i hold the minimum timestamp of all these
processes. Then i is not active infinitely often.
Proof. Suppose that from some time on, i is active forever, i.e., it never
leaves the active loop. Then T [i] < throughout this interval (or else i
leaves the loop), so for any active j, T [j] = by the preceding lemma. It
follows that any active T [j] leaves the active loop after B + O(1) steps of j

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239

(and thus at most R(B + O(1)) steps of i). Can j re-enter? If js timestamp
is less than is, then j will set T [i] = , contradicting our assumption. But
if js timestamp is greater than is, j will not decide its the winner and
will not re-enter the active loop. So now we have i alone in the active loop.
It may still be fighting with processes in the initial fast path, but since i
sets PANIC every time it goes through the loop, and no other process resets
PANIC (since no other process is active), no process enters the fast path after
some bounded number of is steps, and every process in the fast path leaves
after at most R(B + O(1)) of is steps. So eventually i is in the loop alone
foreverand obstruction-freedom means that it finishes its operation and
leaves. This contradicts our initial assumption that i is active forever.
So now we want to argue that our previous assumption that there exists
a bad process that runs forever without winning leads to a contradiction,
by showing that the particular i from Lemma 26.3.2 actually finishes (note
that Lemma 26.3.2 doesnt quite do thiswe only show that i finishes if it
stays active long enough, but maybe it doesnt stay active).
Suppose i is as in Lemma 26.3.2. Then i leaves the active loop infinitely
often. So in particular it increments A[i] infinitely often. After some finite
number of steps, A[i] exceeds the limit R(B +O(1)) on how many steps some
other process can take between increments of A[i]. For each other process j,
either j has a lower timestamp than i, and thus finishes in a finite number of
steps (from the premise of the choice of i), or j has a higher timestamp than
i. Once we have cleared out all the lower-timestamp processes, we follow the
same logic as in the proof of Lemma 26.3.2 to show that eventually (a) i sets
T [i] < and PANIC = true, (b) each remaining j observes T [i] < and
PANIC = true and reaches the waiting loop, (c) all such j wait long enough
(since A[i] is now very big) that i can finish its operation. This contradicts
the assumption that i never finishes the operation and completes the proof.

26.3.1

Cost

If the parameters are badly tuned, the potential cost of this construction is
quite bad. For example, the slow increment process for A[i] means that the
time a process spends in the active loop even after it has defeated all other
processes can be as much as the square of the time it would normally take
to complete an operation aloneand every other process may pay R times
this cost waiting. This can be mitigated to some extent by setting B high
enough that a winning process is likely to finish in its first unmolested pass
through the loop (recall that it doesnt detect that the other processes have

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reset T [i] until after it makes its attempt to finish). An alternative might
be to double A[i] instead of incrementing it at each pass through the loop.
However, it is worth noting (as the authors do in the paper) that nothing
prevents the underlying algorithm from incorporating its own contention
management scheme to ensure that most operations complete in B steps
and PANIC mode is rarely entered. So we can think of the real function of
the construction as serving as a backstop to some more efficient heuristic
approach that doesnt necessarily guarantee wait-free behavior in the worst
case.

26.4

Lower bounds for lock-free protocols

1
So far we have seen that obstruction-freedom buys us an escape from
the impossibility results that plague wait-free constructions, while still allowing practical implementations of useful objects under plausible timing
assumptions. Yet all is not perfect: it is still possible to show non-trivial
lower bounds on the costs of these implementations in the right model. We
will present one of these lower bounds, the linear-contention lower bound of
Ellen, Hendler, and Shavit [EHS12].4 First we have to define what is meant
by contention.

26.4.1

Contention

A limitation of real shared-memory systems is that physics generally wont

permit more than one process to do something useful to a shared object
at a time. This limitation is often ignored in computing the complexity of
a shared-memory distributed algorithm (and one can make arguments for
ignoring it in systems where communication costs dominate update costs
in the shared-memory implementation), but it is useful to recognize it if we
cant prove lower bounds otherwise. Complexity measures that take the cost
of simultaneous access into account go by the name of contention.
The particular notion of contention used in the Ellen et al. paper is an
adaptation of the contention measure of Dwork, Herlihy, and Waarts [DHW97].
The idea is that if I access some shared object, I pay a price in memory
stalls for all the other processes that are trying to access it at the same time
4
The result first appeared in FOCS in 2005 [FHS05], with a small but easily fixed
bug in the definition of the class of objects the proof applies to. Well use the corrected
definition from the journal version.

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241

but got in first. In the original definition, given an execution of the form
A1 2 . . . k A0 , where all operations i are applied to the same object as ,
and the last operation in A is not, then k incurs k memory stalls. Ellen et
al. modify this to only count sequences of non-trivial operations, where an
operation is non-trivial if it changes the state of the object in some states
(e.g., writes, increments, compare-and-swapbut not reads). Note that this
change only strengthens the bound they eventually prove, which shows that
in the worst case, obstruction-free implementations of operations on objects
in a certain class incur a linear number of memory stalls (possibly spread
across multiple base objects).

26.4.2

The class G

The Ellen et al. bound is designed to be as general as possible, so the

authors define a class G of objects to which it applies. As is often the case
in mathematics, the underlying meaning of G is a reasonably large class
of objects for which this particular proof works, but the formal definition
is given in terms of when certain operations of the implemented object are
affected by the presence or absence of other operationsor in other words,
when those other operations need to act on some base object in order to let
later operations know they occurred.
An object is in class G if it has some operation Op and initial state s
such that for any two processes p and q and every sequence of operations
AA0 , where
1. is an instance of Op executed by p,
2. no operation in A or A0 is executed by p,
3. no operation in A0 is executed by q, and
4. no two operations in A0 are executed by the same process;
then there exists a sequence of operations Q by q such that for every sequence
HH 0 where
1. HH 0 is an interleaving of Q and the sequences AA0 |r for each process
r,
2. H 0 contains no operations of q, and
3. no two operations in H 0 are executed by the same process;

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then the return value of to p changes depending on whether it occurs after

A or H.
This is where makes the proof work starts looking like a much simpler
definition. The intuition is that deep in the guts of the proof, we are going
to be injecting some operations of q into an existing execution (hence adding
Q), and we want to do it in a way that forces q to operate on some object
that p is looking at (hence the need for A to return a different value from
H), without breaking anything else that is going on (all the rest of the
conditions). The reason for pulling all of these conditions out of the proof
into a separate definition is that we also want to be able to show that
particular classes of real objects satisfy the conditions required by the proof,
without having to put a lot of special cases into the proof itself.
Lemma 26.4.1. A mod-m fetch-and-increment object, with m n, is in
G.
Proof. This is a classic proof-by-unpacking-the-definition. Pick some execution AA0 satisfying all the conditions, and let a be the number of fetchand-increments in A and a0 the number in A0 . Note a0 n 2, since all
operations in A0 are by different processes.
Now let Q be a sequence of n a0 1 fetch-and-increments by q, and let
HH 0 be an interleaving of Q and the sequences AA0 |r for each r, where H 0
includes no two operation of the same process and no operations at all of
q. Let h, h0 be the number of fetch-and-increments in H, H 0 , respectively.
Then h + h0 = a + a0 + (n a0 1) = n + a 1 and h0 n 2 (since H 0
contains at most one fetch-and-increment for each process other than p and
q). This gives h (n + a + 1) (n 2) = a + 1 and h n + a 1, and the
return value of after H is somewhere in this range mod m. But none of
these values is equal to a mod m (thats why we specified m n, although
as it turns out m n 1 would have been enough), so we get a different
return value from H than from A.
As a corollary, we also get stock fetch-and-increment registers, since we
can build mod-m registers from them by taking the results mod m.
A second class of class-G objects is obtained from snapshot:
Lemma 26.4.2. Single-writer snapshot objects are in G.5
5
For the purposes of this lemma, single-writer means that each segment can be
written to by only one process, not that there is only one process that can execute update
operations.

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Proof. Let AA0 be as in the definition, where is a scan operation. Let

Q consist of a single update operation by q that changes its segment. Then
in the interleaved sequence HH 0 , this update doesnt appear in H 0 (its
forbidden), so it must be in H. Nobody can overwrite the result of the
update (single-writer!), so it follows that H returns a different snapshot
from A.

26.4.3

The lower bound proof

Theorem 26.4.3 ([EHS12, Theorem 5.2]). For any obstruction-free implementation of some object in class G from RMW base objects, there is an
execution in which some operation incurs n 1 stalls.
We cant do better than n 1, because it is easy to come up with implementations of counters (for example) that incur at most n 1 stalls.
Curiously, we can even spread the stalls out in a fairly arbitrary way over
multiple objects, while still incurring at most n 1 stalls. For example, a
counter implemented using a single counter (which is a RMW object) gets
exactly n1 stalls if n1 processes try to increment it at the same time, delaying the remaining process. At the other extreme, a counter implemented
by doing a collect over n 1 single-writer registers (also RMW objects) gets
at least n 1 stallsdistributed as one per registerif each register has a
write delivered to it while the reader waiting to read it during its collect. So
we have to allow for the possibility that stalls are concentrated or scattered
or something in between, as long as the total number adds up at least n 1.
The proof supposes that the theorem is not true and then shows how to
boost an execution with a maximum number k < n1 stalls to an execution
with k+1 stalls, giving a contradiction. (Alternatively, we can read the proof
as giving a mechanism for generating an (n 1)-stall execution by repeated
boosting, starting from the empty execution.)
This is pretty much the usual trick: we assume that there is a class of
bad executions, then look for an extreme member of this class, and show
that it isnt as extreme as we thought. In doing so, we can restrict our
attention to particularly convenient bad executions, so long as the existence
of some bad execution implies the existence of a convenient bad execution.
Formally, the authors define a k-stall execution for process p as an execution E1 . . . i where E and i are sequence of operations such that:
1. p does nothing in E,
2. Sets of processes Sj , j = 1 . . . i, whose union S =

j=1 Sj

has size k,

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are each covering objects Oj after E with pending non-trivial operations,

3. Each j consists of p applying events by itself until it is about to apply
an event to Oj , after which each process in Sj accesses Oj , after which
p accesses Oj .
4. All processes not in S are idle after E,
5. p starts at most one operation of the implemented object in 1 . . . i ,
and
6. In every extension of E in which p and the processes in S dont take
steps, no process applies a non-trivial event to any base object accessed
in 1 . . . i . (We will call this the weird condition below.)
So this definition includes both the fact that p incurs k stalls and some
other technical details that make the proof go through. The fact that p
incurs k stalls follows from observing that it incurs |Sj | stalls in each segment
j , since all processes in Sj access Oj just before p does.
Note that the empty execution is a 0-stall execution (with i = 0) by the
definition. This shows that a k-stall execution exists for some k.
Note also that the weird condition is pretty strong: it claims not only
that there are no non-trivial operation on O1 . . . Oi in , but also that there
are no non-trivial operations on any objects accessed in 1 . . . i , which may
include many more objects accessed by p.6
Well now show that if a k-stall execution exists, for k n 2, then
a (k + k 0 )-stall execution exists for some k 0 > 0. Iterating this process
eventually produces an (n 1)-stall execution.
Start with some k-stall execution E1 . . . i . Extend this execution by
a sequence of operations in which p runs in isolation until it finishes its
operation (which it may start in if it hasnt done so already), then each
process in S runs in isolation until it completes its operation. Now linearize
the high-level operations completed in E1 . . . i and factor them as AA0
as in the definition of class G.
Let q be some process not equal to p or contained in any Sj (this is
where we use the assumption k n 2). Then there is some sequence of
high-level operations Q of q such that H does not return the same value as
A for any interleaving HH 0 of Q with the sequences of operations in AA0
6

And here is where I screwed up in class on 2011-11-14, by writing the condition as

the weaker requirement that nobody touches O1 . . . Oi .

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satisfying the conditions in the definition. We want to use this fact to shove
at least one more memory stall into E1 . . . i , without breaking any of
the other conditions that would make the resulting execution a (k + k 0 )-stall
execution.
Consider the extension of E where q runs alone until it finishes every
operation in Q. Then applies no nontrivial events to any base object
accessed in 1 . . . k , (from the weird condition on k-stall executions) and
the value of each of these base objects is the same after E and E , and thus
is also the same after E1 . . . k and E 1 . . . k .
Now let 0 be the extension of E 1 . . . k defined analogously to : p
finishes, then each process in each Sj finishes. Let HH 0 factor the linearization of E 1 . . . i 0 . Observe that HH 0 is an interleaving of Q and
the high-level operations in AA0 , that H 0 contains no operations by q (they
all finished in , before started), and that H 0 contains no two operations
by the same process (no new high-level operations start after finishes,
so there is at most one pending operation per process in S that can be
linearized after ).
Now observe that q does some non-trivial operation in to some base
object accessed by p in . If not, then p sees the same responses in 0 and
in , and returns the same value, contradicting the definition of class G.
So does qs operation in cause a stall in ? Not necessarily: there
may be other operations in between. Instead, well use the existence of qs
operation to demonstrate the existence of at least one operation, possibly by
some other process we havent even encountered yet, that does cause a stall.
We do this by considering the set F of all finite extensions of E that are free
of p and S operations, and look for an operation that stalls p somewhere in
this infinitely large haystack.
Let Oi+1 be the first base object accessed by p in that is also accessed
by some non-trivial event in some sequence in F . We will show two things:
first, that Oi+1 exists, and second, that Oi+1 is distinct from the objects
O1 . . . Oi . The first part follows from the fact that is in F , and we have
just shown that contains a non-trivial operation (by q) on a base object
accessed by p in . For the second part, we use the weird condition on
k-stall executions again: since every extension of E in F is ({p} S)-free, no
process applies a non-trivial event to any base object accessed in 1 . . . i ,
which includes all the objects O1 . . . Oi .
Youve probably guessed that we are going to put our stalls in on Oi+1 .
We choose some extension X from F that maximizes the number of processes
with simultaneous pending non-trivial operations on Oi+1 (well call this set
of processes Si+1 and let |Si+1 | be the number k 0 > 0 weve been waiting for),

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and let E 0 be the minimum prefix of X such that these pending operations
are still pending after EE 0 .
We now look at the properties of EE 0 . We have:
EE 0 is p-free (follows from E being p-free and E 0 F , since everything
in F is p-free).
Each process in Sj has a pending operation on Oj after EE 0 (it did
after E, and didnt do anything in E 0 ).
This means that we can construct an execution EE 0 1 . . . i i+1 that
includes k + k 0 memory stalls, by sending in the same sequences 1 . . . i as
before, then appending a new sequence of events where (a) p does all of its
operations in up to its first operation on Oi+1 ; then (b) all the processes in
the set Si+1 of processes with pending events on Oi+1 execute their pending
events on Oi+1 ; then (c) p does its first access to Oi+1 from . Note that in
addition to giving us k + k 0 memory stalls, i+1 also has the right structure
for a (k + k 0 )-stall execution. But there is one thing missing: we have to
show that the weird condition on further extensions still holds.
Specifically, letting S 0 = SSi+1 , we need to show that any ({p}S 0 )-free
extension of EE 0 includes a non-trivial access to a base object accessed
in 1 . . . i+1 . Observe first that since is ({p} S 0 )-free, then E 0 is
({p} S)-free, and so its in F : so by the weird condition on E1 . . . i , E 0
doesnt have any non-trivial accesses to any object with a non-trivial access
in 1 . . . i . So we only need to squint very closely at i+1 to make sure it
doesnt get any objects in there either.
Recall that i+1 consists of (a) a sequence of accesses by p to objects
already accessed in 1 . . . i (already excluded); (b) an access of p to Oi+1 ;
and (c) a bunch of accesses by processes in Si+1 to Oi+1 . So we only need
to show that includes no non-trivial accesses to Oi+1 . Suppose that it
does: then there is some process that eventually has a pending non-trivial
operation on Oi+1 somewhere in . If we stop after this initial prefix 0 of ,
we get k 0 + 1 processes with pending operations on Oi+1 in EE 0 0 . But then
E 0 0 is an extension of E with k 0 + 1 processes with a simultaneous pending
operation on Oi+1 . This contradicts the choice of X to maximize k 0 . So
if our previous choice was in fact maximal, the weird condition still holds,
and we have just constructed a (k + k 0 )-stall execution. This concludes the
proof.

CHAPTER 26. OBSTRUCTION-FREEDOM

26.4.4

247

Consequences

Weve just shown that counters and snapshots have (n 1)-stall executions,
because they are in the class G. A further, rather messy argument (given
in the Ellen et al. paper) extends the result to stacks and queues, obtaining
a slightly weaker bound of n total stalls and operations for some process in
the worst case.7 In both cases, we cant expect to get a sublinear worst-case
bound on time under the reasonable assumption that both a memory stall
and an actual operation takes at least one time unit. This puts an inherent
bound on how well we can handle hot spots for many practical objects, and
means that in an asynchronous system, we cant solve contention at the
object level in the worst case (though we may be able to avoid it in our
applications).
But there might be a way out for some restricted classes of objects. We
saw in Chapter 21 that we could escape from the Jayanti-Tan-Toueg [JTT00]
lower bound by considering bounded objects. Something similar may happen here: the Fich-Herlihy-Shavit bound on fetch-and-increments requires
executions with n(n 1)d + n increments to show n 1 stalls for some fetchand-increment if each fetch-and-increment only touches d objects, and even
for d = log n this is already superpolynomial. The max-register construction
of a counter [AAC09] doesnt help here, since everybody hits the switch bit
at the top of the max register, giving n 1 stalls if they all hit it at the
same time. But there might be some better construction that avoids this.

26.4.5

More lower bounds

There are many more lower bounds one can prove on lock-free implementations, many of which are based on previous lower bounds for stronger
models. We wont present these in class, but if you are interested, a good
place to start is [AGHK06].

26.5

Practical considerations

Also beyond the scope of what we can do, there is a paper by Fraser and
Harris [FH07] that gives some nice examples of the practical trade-offs in
choosing between multi-register CAS and various forms of software transactional memory in implementing lock-free data structures.
7
This is out of date: Theorem 6.2 of [EHS12] gives a stronger result than whats in
[FHS05].

Chapter 27

BG simulation
The Borowsky-Gafni simulation [BG93], or BG simulation for short, is
a deterministic, wait-free algorithm that allows t+1 processes to collectively
construct a simulated execution of a system of n > t processes of which t may
crash. For both the simulating and simulated system, the underlying sharedmemory primitives are atomic snapshots; these can be replaced by atomic
registers using any standard snapshot algorithm. The main consequence
of the BG simulation is that the question of what decision tasks can be
computed deterministically by an asynchronous shared-memory system that
tolerates t crash failures reduces to the question of what can be computed
by a wait-free system with exactly t + 1 processes. This is an easier problem,
and in principle can be determined exactly using the topological approach
described in Chapter 28.
The intuition for how this works is that the t + 1 simulating processes
solve a sequence of agreement problems to decide what the n simulated
processes are doing; these agreement problems are structured so that the
failure of a simulator stops at most one agreement. So if at most t of the
simulating processes can fail, only t simulated processes get stuck as well.
Well describe here a version of the BG simulation that appears in
a follow-up paper by Borowsky, Gafni, Lynch, and Rajsbaum [BGLR01].
This gives a more rigorous presentation of the mechanisms of the original
Borowsky-Gafni paper, and includes a few simplifications.

27.1

Safe agreement

The safe agreement mechanism performs agreement without running into

the FLP bound, by using termination condition: it is guaranteed to termi248

CHAPTER 27. BG SIMULATION

249

nate only if there are no failures by any process during an initial unsafe
section of its execution. Each process i starts the agreement protocol with a
proposei (v) event for its input value v. At some point during the execution
of the protocol, the process receives a notification safei , followed later (if
the protocol finishes) by a second notification agreei (v 0 ) for some output
value v 0 . It is guaranteed that the protocol terminates as long as all processes continue to take steps until they receive the safe notification, and
that the usual validity (all outputs equal some input) and agreement (all
outputs equal each other) conditions hold. There is also a wait-free progress
condition that the safei notices do eventually arrive for any process that
doesnt fail, no matter what the other processes do (so nobody gets stuck
in their unsafe section).
Pseudocode for a safe agreement object is given in Algorithm 27.1. This
is a translation of the description of the algorithim in [BGLR01], which is
specified at a lower level using I/O automata.

1
2

3
4

6
7
8

// proposei (v)
A[i] hv, ii
if snapshot(A) contains hj, 2i for some j 6= i then
// Back off
A[i] hv, 0i
else
// Advance
A[i] hv, 2i
// safei
repeat
s snapshot(A)
until s does not contain hj, 1i for any j
// agreei
return s[j].value where j is smallest index with s[j].level = 2
Algorithm 27.1: Safe agreement (adapted from [BGLR01])

The communication mechanism is a snapshot object containing a pair

A[i] = hvaluei , leveli i for each process i, initially h, 0i. When a process
carries out proposei (v), it sets A[i] to hv, 1i, advancing to level 1. It then
looks around to see if anybody else is at level 2; if so, it backs off to 0, and
if not, it advances to 2. In either case it then spins until it sees a snapshot
with nobody at level 1, and agrees on the level-2 value with the smallest
index i.

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250

The safei transition occurs when the process leaves level 1 (no matter
which way it goes). This satisfies the progress condition, since there is
no loop before this, and guarantees termination if all processes leave their
unsafe interval, because no process can then wait forever for the last 1 to
disappear.
To show agreement, observe that at least one process advances to level 2
(because the only way a process doesnt is if some other process has already
advanced to level 2), so any process i that terminates observes a snapshot
s that contains at least one level-2 tuple and no level-1 tuples. This means
that any process j whose value is not already at level 2 in s can at worst
reach level 1 after s is taken. But then j sees a level-2 tuples and backs
off. It follows that any other process i0 that takes a later snapshot s0 that
includes no level-1 tuples sees the same level-2 tuples as i, and computes the
same return value. (Validity also holds, for the usual trivial reasons.)

27.2

The basic simulation algorithm

The basic BG simulation uses a single snapshot object A with t + 1 components (one for each simulating process) and an infinite array of safe agreement objects Sjr , where the output of Sjr represents the value sjr of the
r-th snapshot performed by simulated process j. Each component A[i] of A
is itself a vector of n components A[i][j], each of which is a tuple hv, ri representing the value v that process i determines process j would have written
after taking its r-th snapshot.1
Each simulating process i cycles through all simulated processes j. Simulating one round of a particular process j involves four phases:
1. The process makes an initial guess for sjr by taking a snapshot of A and
taking the value with the largest round number for each component
A[][k].
2. The process initiates the safe agreement protocol Sjr using this guess.
It continues to run Sjr until it leaves the unsafe interval.
1
The underlying assumption is that all simulated processes alternate between taking
snapshots and doing updates. This assumption is not very restrictive, because two snapshots with no intervening update are equivalent to two snapshots separated by an update
that doesnt change anything, and two updates with no intervening snapshot can be replaced by just the second update, since the adversary could choose to schedule them
back-to-back anyway.

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251

3. The process attempts to finish Sjr , by performing one iteration of the

loop from Algorithm 27.1. If this iteration doesnt succeed, it moves on
to simulating j + 1 (but will come back to this phase for j eventually).
4. If Sjr terminates, the process computes a new value vjr for j to write
based on the simulated snapshot returned by Sjr , and updates A[i][j]
with hvjr , ri.
Actually implementing this while maintaining an abstraction barrier
around safe agreement is tricky. One approach might be to have each process i manage a separate thread for each simulated process j, and wrap the
unsafe part of the safe agreement protocol inside a mutex just for threads
of i. This guarantees that i enters the unsafe part of any safe agreement
object on behalf of only one simulated j at a time, while preventing delays
in the safe part of Sjr from blocking it from finishing some other Sj 0 r0 .

27.3

Effect of failures

So now what happens if a simulating process i fails? This wont stop any
other process i0 from taking snapshots on behalf of j, or from generating its
own values to put in A[i0 ][j]. What it may do is prevent some safe agreement
object Sjr from terminating. The termination property of Sjr means that
this can only occur if the failure occurs while i is in the unsafe interval for
Sjr but since i is only in the unsafe interval for at most one Sjr at a time,
this stalls only one simulated process j. It doesnt block any i0 , because any
other i0 is guaranteed to leave its own unsafe interval for Sjr after finitely
many steps, and though it may waste some effort waiting for Sjr to finish,
once it is in the safe interval it doesnt actually wait for it before moving on
to other simulated j 0 .
It follows that each failure of a simulating process knocks out at most
one simulated process. So a wait-free system with t + 1 processesand thus
at most t failures in the executions we care aboutwill produces at most t
failures inside the simulation.

27.4

Inputs and outputs

Two details not specified in the description above are how i determines
js initial input and how i determines its own outputs from the outputs
of the simulated processes. For the basic BG simulation, this is pretty
straightforwards: we use the safe agreement objects Sj0 to agree on js

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252

input, after each i proposes its own input vector for all j based on its own
input to the simulator protocol. For outputs, i waits for at least n t of the
simulated processes to finish, and computes its own output based on what
it sees.
One issue that arises here is that we can only use the simulation to
solve colorless tasks, which are decision problems where any process can
take the output of any other process without causing trouble.2 This works
for consensus or k-set agreement, but fails pretty badly for renaming. The
extended BG simulation, due to Gafni [Gaf09], solves this problem by
mapping each simulating process p to a specific simulated process qp , and
using a more sophisticated simulation algorithm to guarantee that qp doesnt
crash unless p does. Details can be found in Gafnis paper; there is also a
later paper by Imbs and Raynal [IR09] that simplifies some details of the
construction. Here, we will limit ourselves to the basic BG simulation.

27.5

Correctness of the simulation

To show that the simulation works, observe that we can extract a simulated
execution by applying the following rules:
1. The round-r write operation of j is represented by the first write tagged
with round r performed for j.
2. The round-r snapshot operation of j is represented by whichever snapshot operation wins Sjr .
The simulated execution then consists of a sequence of write and snapshot operations, with order of the operations determined by the order of
their representatives in the simulating execution, and the return values of
the snapshots determined by the return values of their representatives.
Because all processes that simulate a write for j in round r use the same
snapshots to compute the state of j, they all write the same value. So
the only way we get into trouble is if the writes included in our simulated
snapshots are inconsistent with the ordering of the simulated operations
defined above. Here the fact that each simulated snapshot corresponds to a
real snapshot makes everything work: when a process performs a snapshot
for Sjr , then it includes all the simulated write operations that happen
2

The term colorless here comes from use of colors to represent process ids in the topological approach described in Chapter 28. These colors arent really colors, but topologists
like coloring nodes better than assigning them ids.

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253

before this snapshot, since the s-th write operation by k will be represented
in the snapshot if and only if the first instance of the s-th write operation
by k occurs before it. The only tricky bit is that process is snapshot for
Sjr might include some operations that cant possibly be included in Sjr ,
like js round-r write or some other operation that depends on it. But this
can only occur if some other process finished Sjr before process i takes its
snapshot, in which case is snapshot will not win Sjr and will be discarded.

27.6

BG simulation and consensus

BG simulation was originally developed to attack k-set agreement, but (as

pointed out by Gafni [Gaf09]) it gives a particularly simple proof of the
impossibility of consensus with one faulty process. Suppose that we had
a consensus protocol that solved consensus for n > 1 processes with one
crash failure, using only atomic registers. Then we could use BG simulation
to get a wait-free consensus protocol for two processes. But its easy to
show that atomic registers cant solve wait-free consensus, because (following [LAA87]), we only need to do the last step of FLP that gets a contradiction when moving from a bivalent C to 0-valent Cx or 1-valent Cy. We thus
avoid the complications that arise in the original FLP proof from having to
deal with fairness.
More generally, BG simulation means that increasing the number of
processes while keeping the same number of crash failures doesnt let us
compute anything we couldnt before. This gives a formal justification for
the slogan that the difference between distributed computing and parallel
computing is that in a distributed system, more processes can only make
things worse.

Chapter 28

Topological methods
Here well describe some results applying topology to distributed computing,
mostly following a classic paper of Herlihy and Shavit [HS99]. This was one
of several papers [BG93, SZ00] that independently proved lower bounds on
k-set agreement [Cha93], which is a relaxation of consensus where we
require only that there are at most k distinct output values (consensus is
1-set agreement). These lower bounds had failed to succumb to simpler
techniques.

28.1

Basic idea

Represent indistinguishability proofs using tools from topology.

Typical indistinguishability proof:
Show certain executions are indistinguishable to some process
(and thus that process produces same output in both executions).
In general case, have a chain of schedules S1 , S2 , . . . , Sk such that
for each i there is some p with Si |p = Si+1 |p. The restriction
to p acts as an edge between points representing executions, and
we use the existence of a path of such edges as a proof that the
decision value in S1 is the same as in Sk , assuming all processes
must agree on the decision value.
Topological version:
Essentially the dual of the above: points are now individual
process states (or histories), and edges (and higher-dimensional
254

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

255

structures) represent consistent states of different processes (i.e.,

executions in which both states occur).
Considering many possible states produces a simplicial complex, a finite combinatorial structure used in topology to model
continuous surfaces.
Properties of the simplicial complex resulting from some protocol
or problem specification can then be used to determine properties
of the underlying protocol or problem.
Topologists know a lot of properties to look at.

28.2

k-set agreement

The motivating problem for much of this work was getting impossibility
results for k-set agreement, proposed by Chaudhuri [Cha93]. The k-set
agreement problem is similar to consensus, where each process starts with
an input and eventually returns a decision value that must be equal to some
processs input, but the agreement condition is relaxed to require only that
the set of decision values include at most k values.
With k 1 crash failures, its easy to build a k-set agreement algorithm:
wait until you seen n k + 1 input values, then choose the smallest one you
see. This works because any value a process returns is necessarily among
the k smallest input values (including the k 1 it didnt see). Chaudhuri
conjectured that k-set agreement was not solvable with k failures, and gave
a proof of a partial result (analogous to the existence of an initial bivalent
configuration for consensus) based on Sperners Lemma [Spe28]. This is a
classic result in topology that says that certain colorings of the vertices of a
graph in the form of a triangle that has been divided into smaller triangles
necessarily contain a small triangle with three different colors on its corners.
This connection between k-set renaming and Sperners Lemma became the
basic idea behind each the three independent proofs of the conjecture that
appeared shortly thereafter [HS99, BG93, SZ00].
Our plan is to give a sufficient high-level description of the topological approach that the connection between k-set agreement and Sperners
Lemma becomes obvious. It is possible to avoid this by approaching the
problem purely combinatorially, as is done in Section 16.3 of [AW04]. The
presentation there is obtained by starting with a topological argument and
getting rid of the topology (in fact, the proof in [AW04] contains a proof
of Sperners Lemma with the serial numbers filed off). The disadvantage of
this approach is that it obscures what is really going in and makes it harder

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to obtain insight into how topological techniques might help for other problems. The advantage is that (unlike these notes) the resulting text includes
actual proofs instead of handwaving.

28.3

Representing distributed computations using

topology

Topology is the study of properties of shapes that are preserved by continuous functions between their points that have continuous inverses, which get
the rather fancy name of homeomorphisms. A continuous function1 is one
that maps nearby points to nearby points. A homeomorphism is continuous
in both directions: this basically means that you can stretch and twist and
otherwise deform your object however you like, as long as you dont tear
it (which would map nearby points on opposite sides of the tear to distant
points) or glue bits of it together (which turns into tearing when we look
at the inverse function). Topologists are particularly interested in showing
when there is no homeomorphism between two objects; the classic example
is that you cant turn a sphere into a donut without damaging it, but you
can turn a donut into a coffee mug (with a handle).
Working with arbitrary objects embedded in umpteen-dimensional spaces
is messy, so topologists invented a finite way of describing certain wellbehaved objects combinatorially, by replacing ugly continuous objects like
spheres and coffee mugs with simpler objects pasted together in complex
ways. The simpler objects are simplexes, and the more complicated pastedtogether objects are called simplicial complexes. The nifty thing about
simplicial complexes is that they give a convenient tool for describing what
states or outputs of processes in a distributed algorithm are compatible in
some sense, and because topologists know a lot about simplicial complexes,
we can steal their tools to describe distributed algorithms.

28.3.1

Simplicial complexes and process states

The formal definition of a k-dimensional simplex is the convex closure of

(k + 1) points {x1 . . . xk+1 } in general position; the convex closure part
P
P
means the set of all points
ai xi where
ai = 1 and each ai 0, and
the general position part means that the xi are not all contained in some
1

Strictly speaking, a continuous function between metric spaces; there is an even more
general definition of continuity that holds for spaces that are too strange to have a consistent notion of distance.

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

257

subspace of dimension (k 1) or smaller (so that the simplex isnt squashed

flat somehow). What this gives us is a body with (k + 1) corners and (k + 1)
faces, each of which is a (k 1)-dimensional simplex (the base case is that
a 0-dimensional simplex is a point). Each face includes all but one of the
corners, and each corner is on all but one of the faces. So we have:
0-dimensional simplex: point.2
1-dimensional simplex: line segment with 2 endpoints (which are both
corners and faces).
2-dimensional simplex: triangle (3 corners with 3 1-dimensional simplexes for sides).
3-dimensional simplex: tetrahedron (4 corners, 4 triangular faces).
4-dimensional simplex: 5 corners, 5 tetrahedral faces. Its probably
best not to try to visualize this.
A simplicial complex is a bunch of simplexes stuck together; formally,
this means that we pretend that some of the corners (and any faces that
include them) of different simplexes are identical points. There are ways to
do this right using equivalence relations. But its easier to abstract out the
actual geometry and go straight to a combinatorial structure.
An (abstract) simplicial complex is just a collection of sets with the
property that if A is a subset of B, and B is in the complex, then A is also
in the complex (this means that if some simplex is included, so are all of
its faces, their faces, etc.). This combinatorial version is nice for reasoning
about simplicial complexes, but is not so good for drawing pictures.
The trick to using this for distributed computing problems is that we
are going to build simplicial complexes by letting points be process states
(or sometimes process inputs or outputs), each labeled with a process id,
and letting the sets that appear in the complex be those collections of
states/inputs/outputs that are compatible with each other in some sense.
For states, this means that they all appear in some global configuration
in some admissible execution of some system; for inputs and outputs, this
means that they are permitted combinations of inputs or outputs in the
specification of some problem.
2
For consistency, its sometimes convenient to define a point as having a single (1)dimensional face defined to be the empty set. We wont need to bother with this, since
0-dimensional simplicial complexes correspond to 1-process distributed systems, which are
amply covered in almost every other Computer Science class you have ever taken.

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

258

Example: For 2-process binary consensus with processes 0 and 1, the input complex, which describes all possible combinations of inputs, consists
of the sets
{{}, {p0}, {q0}, {p1}, {q1}, {p0, q0}, {p0, q1}, {p1, q0}, {p1, q1}} ,
which we might draw like this:
p0

Note that there are no edges from p0 to p1 or q0 to q1: we cant have

two different states of the same process in the same global configuration.
The output complex, which describes the permitted outputs, is
{{}, {p0}, {q0}, {p1}, {q1}, {p0, q0}, {p1, q1}} .
As a picture, this omits two of the edges (1-dimensional simplexes) from the
input complex:
p0

One thing to notice about this output complex is that it is not connected: there is no path from the p0q0 component to the q1p1 component.
Here is a simplicial complex describing the possible states of two processes p and q, after each writes 1 to its own bit then reads the other processs
bit. Each node in the picture is labeled by a sequence of process ids. The
first id in the sequence is the process whose view this node represents; any
other process ids are processes this first process sees (by seeing a 1 in the
other processs register). So p is the view of process p running by itself,
while pq is the view of process p running in an execution where it reads qs
register after q writes it.
p

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259

The edges express the constraint that if we both write before we read,
then if I dont see your value you must see mine (which is why there is no
pq edge), but all other combinations are possible. Note that this complex
is connected: there is a path between any two points.
Heres a fancier version in which each process writes its input (and remembers it), then reads the other processs register (i.e., a one-round fullinformation protocol). We now have final states that include the processs
own id and input first, then the other processs id and input if it is visible.
For example, p1 means p starts with 1 but sees a null and q0p1 means q
starts with 0 but sees ps 1. The general rule is that two states are compatible if p either sees nothing or qs actual input and similarly for q, and that
at least one of p or q must see the others input. This gives the following
simplicial complex:
p0

q0p0

p0q0

q1p0

p1q0

p0q1

q0p1

p1q1

q1p1

Again, the complex is connected.

The fact that this looks like four copies of the pqppqq complex pasted
into each edge of the input complex is not an accident: if we fix a pair of
inputs i and j, we get piqjpipiqjqj, and the corners are pasted together
because if p sees only p0 (say), it cant tell if its in the p0/q0 execution or
the p0/q1 execution.
The same process occurs if we run a two-round protocol of this form,
where the input in the second round is the output from the first round.
Each round subdivides one edge from the previous round into three edges:

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

260

pq
p qp pq q
p (qp)p p(qp) qp (pq)(qp) (qp)(pq) pq q(pq) (pq)q q

Here (pq)(qp) is the view of p after seeing pq in the first round and seeing
that q saw qp in the first round.

28.3.2

Subdivisions

In the simple write-then-read protocol above, we saw a single input edge turn
into 3 edges. Topologically, this is an example of a subdivision, where we
represent a simplex using several new simplexes pasted together that cover
exactly the same points.
Certain classes of protocols naturally yield subdivisions of the input
complex. The iterated immediate snapshot (IIS) model, defined by
Borowsky and Gafni [BG97], considers executions made up of a sequence
of rounds (the iterated part) where each round is made up of one or more
mini-rounds in which some subset of the processes all write out their current views to their own registers and then take snapshots of all the registers
(the immediate snapshot part). The two-process protocols of the previous
section are special cases of this model.
Within each round, each process p obtains a view vp that contains the
previous-round views of some subset of the processes. We can represent the
views as a subset of the processes, which we will abbreviate in pictures by
putting the view owner first: pqr will be the view {p, q, r} as seen by p, while
qpr will be the same view as seen by q. The requirements on these views
are that (a) every process sees its own previous view: p vp for all p; (b)
all views are comparable: vp vq or vq vp ; and (c) if I see you, then I see
everything you see: q vp implies vq vp . This last requirement is called
immediacy and follows from the assumption that writes and snapshots are
done in the same mini-round: if I see your write, then your snapshot takes
place no later than mine does.
The IIS model does not correspond exactly to a standard shared-memory
model (or even a standard shared-memory model augmented with cheap
snapshots). There are two reasons for this: standard snapshots dont provide

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

261

immediacy, and standard snapshots allow processes to go back an perform

more than one snapshot on the same object. The first issue goes away if we
are looking at impossibility proofs, because the adversary can restrict itself
only to those executions that satisfy immediacy. The second issue is more
delicate, but Borowsky and Gafni demonstrate that any decision protocol
that runs in the standard model can be simulated in the IIS model, using a
variant of BG simulation.
For three processes, one round of immediate snapshots gives rise to the
simplicial complex depicted in Figure 28.1. The corners of the big triangle
are the solo views of processes that do their snapshots before anybody else
shows up. Along the edges of the big triangle are views corresponding to 2process executions, while in the middle are complete views of processes that
run late enough to see everything. Each little triangle corresponds to some
execution. For example, the triangle with corners p, qp, rpq corresponds to
a sequential execution where p sees nobody, q sees p, and r sees both p and
q. The triangle with corners pqr, qpr, and rpq is the maximally-concurrent
execution where all three processes write before all doing their snapshots:
here everybody sees everybody. It is not terribly hard to enumerate all
possible executions and verify that the picture includes all of them. In higher
dimension, the picture is more complicated, but we still get a subdivision
that preserves the original topological structure [BG97].
Figure 28.2 shows (part of) the next step of this process: here we have
done two iterations of immediate snapshot, and filled in the second-round
subdivisions for the pqprrpq and pqrqprrpq triangles. (Please imagine
similar subdivisions of all the other triangles that I was too lazy to fill in
by hand.) The structure is recursive, with each first-level triangle mapping
to an image of the entire first-level complex. As in the two-process case,
adjacent triangles overlap because the relevant processes dont have enough
information; for example, the points on the qprrpq edge correspond to
views of q or r that dont include p in round 2 and so cant tell whether p
saw p or pqr in round 1.
The important feature of the round-2 complex (and the round-k complex
in general) is that its a triangulation of the original outer triangle: a
partition into little triangles where each corner aligns with corners of other
little triangles.
(Better pictures of this process in action can be found in Figures 25 and
26 of [HS99].)

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

262

qpr

rpq
pq

pqr

Figure 28.1: Subdivision corresponding to one round of immediate snapshot

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

263

qpr

rpq
pq

pqr

Figure 28.2: Subdivision corresponding to two rounds of immediate snapshot

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

264

1
3

1
2

Figure 28.3: An attempt at 2-set agreement

28.4

Impossibility of k-set agreement

Now lets show that there is no way to do k-set agreement with n = k + 1

processes in the IIS model.
Suppose that after some fixed number of rounds, each process chooses
an output value. This output can only depend on the view of the process,
so is fixed for each vertex in the subdivision. Also, the validity condition
means that a process can only choose an output that it can see among the
inputs in its view. This means that at the corners of the outer triangle
(corresponding to views where the process thinks its alone), a process must
return its input, while along the outer edges (corresponding to views where
two processes may see each other but not the third), a process must return
one of the two inputs that appear in the corners incident to the edge. Internal
corners correspond to views that includedirectly or indirectlythe inputs
of all processes, so these can be labeled arbitrarily. An example is given in
Figure 28.3, for a one-round protocol with three processes.

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265

We now run into Sperners Lemma [Spe28], which says that, for any
subdivision of a simplex into smaller simplexes, if each corner of the original
simplex has a different color, and each corner that appears on some face of
the original simplex has a color equal to the color of one of the corners of
that face, then within the subdivision there are an odd number of simplexes
whose corners are all colored differently.3
How this applies to k-set agreement: Suppose we have n = k+1 processes
in a wait-free system (corresponding to allowing up to k failures). With
the cooperation of the adversary, we can restrict ourselves to executions
consisting of ` rounds of iterated immediate snapshot for some ` (termination
comes in here to show that ` is finite). This gives a subdivision of a simplex,
where each little simplex corresponds to some particular execution and each
corner some processs view. Color all the corners of the little simplexes in
this subdivision with the output of the process holding the corresponding
view. Validity means that these colors satisfy the requirements of Sperners
Lemma. Sperners Lemma then says that some little simplex has all k + 1
colors, giving us a bad execution with more than k distinct output values.
The general result says that we cant do k-set agreement with k failures
for any n > k. We havent proved this result, but it can be obtained from
the n = k + 1 version using a simulation of k + 1 processes with k failures
by n processes with k failures due to Borowsky and Gafni [BG93].

28.5

Simplicial maps and specifications

Lets step back and look at consensus again.

3
The proof of Sperners Lemma is not hard, and is done by induction on the dimension
k. For k = 0, any subdivision consists of exactly one zero-dimensional simplex whose single
corner covers all k + 1 = 1 colors. For k + 1, suppose that the colors are {1, . . . , k + 1},
and construct a graph with a vertex for each little simplex in the subdivision and an
extra vertex for the region outside the big simplex. Put an edge in this graph between
each pair of regions that share a k-dimensional face with colors {1, . . . , k}. The induction
hypothesis tells us that there are an odd number of edges between the outer-region vertex
and simplexes on the {1, . . . , k}-colored face of the big simplex. The Handshaking Lemma
from graph theory says that the sum of the degrees of all the nodes in the graph is even.
But this can only happen if there are an even number of nodes with odd degree, implying
that the are are an odd number of simplexes in the subdivision with an odd number of
faces colored {1, . . . , k}.
Now suppose we have a simplex with at least one face f colored {1, . . . , k}. If the
opposite corner is colored c 6= k + 1, then it has exactly two faces colored {1, . . . , k}: f ,
and the face that replaces f s c-colored corner with the opposite corner. So the only way
to get an odd number of {1, . . . , k}-colored faces is to have all k + 1 colors. It follows that
there are an odd number of (k + 1)-colored simplexes.

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266

One thing we could conclude from the fact that the output complex for
consensus was not connected but the ones describing our simple protocols
were was that we cant solve consensus (non-trivially) using these protocols.
The reason is that to solve consensus using such a protocol, we would need
to have a mapping from states to outputs (this is just whatever rule tells
each process what to decide in each state) with the property that if some
collection of states are consistent, then the outputs they are mapped to are
consistent.
In simplical complex terms, this means that the mapping from states
to outputs is a simplicial map, a function f from points in one simplicial
complex C to points in another simplicial complex D such that for any
simplex A C, f (A) = {f (x)|x A} gives a simplex in D. (Recall that
consistency is represented by including a simplex, in both the state complex
and the output complex.) A mapping from states to outputs that satisfies
the consistency requirements encoded in the output complex s always a
simplicial map, with the additional requirement that it preserves process ids
(we dont want process p to decide the output for process q). Conversely,
any id-preserving simplicial map gives an output function that satisfies the
consistency requirements.
Simplicial maps are examples of continuous functions, which have all
sorts of nice topological properties. One nice property is that a continuous
function cant separate a connected space into disconnected components. We
can prove this directly for simplical maps: if there is a path of 1-simplexes
{x1 , x2 }, {x2 , x3 }, . . . {xk1 , xk } from x1 to xk in C, and f : C D is a
simplicial map, then there is a path of 1-simplexes {f (x1 ), f (x2 )}, . . . from
f (x1 ) to f (xk ). Since being connected just means that there is a path
between any two points,4 if C is connected weve just shown that f (C) is as
well.
Getting back to our consensus example, it doesnt matter what simplicial
map f you pick to map process states to outputs; since the state complex C
is connected, so is f (C), so it lies entirely within one of the two connected
components of the output complex. This means in particular that everybody
always outputs 0 or 1: the protocol is trivial.

28.5.1

Mapping inputs to outputs

For general decision tasks, its not enough for the outputs to be consistent
with each other. They also have to be consistent with the inputs. This can
4

Technically, this is the definition of path-connected, which is the same as connected

for well-behaved topological spaces.

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

267

be expressed by a relation between input simplexes and output simplexes.

Formally, a decision task is modeled by a triple (I, O, ), where I is the
input complex, O is the output complex, and (A, B) if and only if B is
a permissible output given input I. Here there are no particular restrictions
on (for example, it doesnt have to be a simplicial map or even a function),
but it probably doesnt make sense to look at decision tasks unless there is
at least one permitted output simplex for each input simplex.

28.6

The asynchronous computability theorem

Given a decision task specified in this way, there is a topological characterization of when it has a wait-free solution. This is given by the Asynchronous
Computability Theorem (Theorem 3.1 in [HS99]), which says:
Theorem 28.6.1. A decision task (I, O, ) has a wait-free protocol using
shared memory if and only if there exists a chromatic subdivision of I and
a color-preserving simplicial map : (I) O such that for each simplex s
in (I), (S) (carrier(S, I)).
To unpack this slightly, a chromatic subdivision is a subdivision where
each vertex is labeled by a process id (a color), and no simplex has two
vertices with the same color. A color-preserving simplicial map is a simplicial
map that preserves ids. The carrier of a simplex in a subdivision is whatever
original simplex it is part of. So the theorem says that I can only solve a
task if I can find a simplicial map from a subdivision of the input complex
to the output complex that doesnt do anything strange to process ids and
that is consistent with .
Looking just at the theorem, one might imagine that the proof consists
of showing that the protocol complex defined by the state complex after
running the protocol to completion is a subdivision of the input complex,
followed by the same argument weve seen already about mapping the state
complex to the output complex. This is almost right, but its complicated by
two inconvenient facts: (a) the state complex generally isnt a subdivision of
the input complex, and (b) if we have a map from an arbitrary subdivision
of the input complex, it is not clear that there is a corresponding protocol
that produces this particular subdivision.
So instead the proof works like this:
Protocol implies map Even though we dont get a subdivision with the
full protocol, there is a restricted set of executions that does give a

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268

subdivision. So if the protocol works on this restricted set of executions, an appropriate map exists. There are two ways to prove this:
Herlihy and Shavit do so directly, by showing that this restricted set
of executions exists, and Borowksy and Gafni [BG97] do so indirectly,
by showing that the IIS model (which produces exactly the standard
chromatic subdivision used in the ACT proof) can simulate an ordinary snapshot model. Both methods are a bit involved, so we will skip
over this part.
Map implies protocol This requires an algorithm. The idea here is that
that participating set algorithm, originally developed to solve k-set
agreement [BG93], produces precisely the standard chromatic subdivision used in the ACT proof. In particular, it can be used to solve the
problem of simplex agreement, the problem of getting the processes
to agree on a particular simplex contained within the subdivision of
their original common input simplex. This is a little easier to explain,
so well do it.

28.6.1

The participating set protocol

Algorithm 28.1 depicts the participating set protocol; this first appeared
in [BG93], although the presentation here is heavily influenced by the version
in Elizabeth Borowskys dissertation [Bor95]. The shared data consists of
a snapshot object level, and processes start at a high level and float down
until they reach a level i such that there are already i processes at this level
or below. The set returned by a process consists of all processes it sees at
its own level or below, and it can be shown that this in fact implements a
one-shot immediate snapshot. Since immediate snapshots yield a standard
subdivision, this gives us what we want for converting a color-preserving
simplicial map to an actual protocol.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Initially, level[i] = n + 2 for all i.

repeat
level[i] level[i] 1
v snapshot(level)
S {j | v[j] level[i]}
until |S| level[i]
|S| level[i] return S
Algorithm 28.1: Participating set

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269

The following theorem shows that the return values from participating
set have all the properties we want for iterated immediate snapshot:
Theorem 28.6.2. Let Si be the output of the participating set algorithm for
process i. Then all of the following conditions hold:
1. For all i, i Si . (Self-containment.)
2. For all i, j, Si Sj or Sj Si . (Atomic snapshot.)
3. For all i, j, if i Sj , then Si Sj . (Immediacy.)
Proof. Self-inclusion is trivial, but we will have to do some work for the
other two properties.
The first step is to show that Algorithm 28.1 neatly sorts the processes
out into levels, where each process that returns at level k returns precisely
the set of processes at level k and below.
For each process i, let Si be defined as above, let ì be the final value of
level[i] when i returns, and let Si0 = {j | `j Si }. Our goal is to show that
Si0 = Si , justifying the above claim.
Because no process ever increases its level, if process i observes level[j]
ì in its last snapshot, then `j level[j] ì . So Si0 is a superset of Si . We
thus need to show only that no extra processes sneak in; in particular, we
will to show that Si = Si0 , by showing that both equal ì .
The first step is to show that |Si0 | |Si | ì . The first inequality follows
from the fact that Si0 Si ; the second follows from the code (if not, i would
have stayed in the loop).
The second step is to show that |Si0 | ì . Suppose not; that is, suppose
that |Si0 | > ì . Then there are at least ì +1 processes with level ì or less, all
of which take a snapshot on level ì + 1. Let i0 be the last of these processes
to take a snapshot while on level ì + 1. Then i0 sees at least ì + 1 processes
at level ì + 1 or less and exits, contradicting the assumption that it reaches
level ì . So |Si0 | ì .
The atomic snapshot property follows immediately from the fact that if
ì `j , then `k ì implies `k `j , giving Si = Si0 Sj0 = Sj . Similarly,
for immediacy we have that if i Sj , then ì `j , giving Si Sj by the
same argument.
The missing piece for turning this into IIS is that in Algorithm 28.1, I
only learn the identities of the processes I am supposed to include but not
their input values. This is easily dealt with by adding an extra register for
each process, to which it writes its input before executing participating set.

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

28.7

270

Proving impossibility results

To show something is impossible using the ACT, we need to show that there
is no color-preserving simplicial map from a subdivision of I to O satisfying
the conditions in . This turns out to be equivalent to showing that there
is no continuous function from I to O with the same properties, because
any such simplicial map can be turned into a continuous function (on the
geometric version of I, which includes the intermediate points in addition
to the corners). Fortunately, topologists have many tools for proving nonexistence of continuous functions.

28.7.1

k-connectivity

Define the m-dimensional disk to be the set of all points at most 1 unit away
from the origin in Rm , and the m-dimensional sphere to be the surface of
the (m + 1)-dimensional disk (i.e., all points exactly 1 unit away from the
origin in Rm+1 ). Note that what we usually think of as a sphere (a solid
body), topologists call a disk, leaving the term sphere for just the outside
part.
An object is k-connected if any continuous image of an m-dimensional
sphere can be extended to a continuous image of an (m + 1)-dimensional
disk, for all m k.5 This is a roundabout way of saying that if we can
draw something that looks like a deformed sphere inside our object, we can
always include the inside as well: there are no holes that get in the way.
The punch line is that continuous functions preserve k-connectivity: if we
map an object with no holes into some other object, the image had better
not have any holes either.
Ordinary path-connectivity is the special case when k = 0; here, the
0-sphere consists of two points and the 1-disk is the path between them. So
0-connectivity says that for any two points, there is a path between them.
For 1-connectivity, if we draw a loop (a path that returns to its origin), we
can include the interior of the loop somewhere. One way to thinking about
this is to say that we can shrink the loop to a point without leaving the object
(the technical term for this is that the path is null-homotopic, where a
homotopy is a way to transform one thing continuously into another thing
over time and the null path sits on a single point). An object that is
1-connected is also called simply connected.
5

This definition is for the topological version of k-connectivity. It is not related in any
way to the definition of k-connectivity in graph theory, where a graph is k-connected if
there are k disjoint paths between any two points.

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

271

For 2-connectivity, we cant contract a sphere (or box, or the surface of

a 2-simplex, or anything else that looks like a sphere) to a point.
The important thing about k-connectivity is that it is possible to prove
that any subdivision of a k-connected simplicial complex is also k-connected
(sort of obvious if you think about the pictures, but it can also be proved
formally), and that k-connectivity is preserved by simplicial maps (if not,
somewhere in the middle of all the k-simplexes representing our surface is a
(k + 1)-simplex in the domain that maps to a hole in the range, violating the
rule that simplicial maps map simplexes to simplexes). So a quick way to
show that the Asynchronous Computability Theorem implies that something
is not asynchronously computable is to show that the input complex is kconnected and the output complex isnt.

28.7.2

Impossibility proofs for specific problems

Here are some applications of the Asynchronous Computability Theorem

and k-connectivity:
Consensus There is no nontrivial wait-free consensus protocol for n 2
processes. Proof: The input complex is 1-connected, but the output
complex is not, and we need a map that covers the entire output
complex (by nontriviality).
k-set agreement There is no wait-free k-set agreement for n k + 1
processes. Proof: The output complex for k-set agreement is not kconnected, because buried inside it are lots of (k+1)-dimensional holes
corresponding to missing simplexes where all k + 1 processes choose
different values. But these holes arent present in the input complex
its OK if everybody starts with different inputsand the validity
requirements for k-set agreement force us to map the surfaces of these
non-holes around holes in the output complex. (This proof actually
turns into the Sperners Lemma proof if we fully expand the claim
about having to map the input complex around the hole.)
Renaming There is no wait-free renaming protocol with less than 2n 1
output names for all n. The general proof of this requires showing that
with fewer names we get holes that are too big (and ultimately reduces
to Sperners Lemma); for the special case of n = 3 and m = 4, see
Figure 28.4, which shows how the output complex of renaming folds
up into the surface of a torus. This means that renaming for n = 3

CHAPTER 28. TOPOLOGICAL METHODS

b1
c3
a1

a4
b2

b2
c4

272

a3
b1

a2
c3

b4
c2

Figure 28.4: Output complex for renaming with n = 3, m = 4. Each vertex

is labeled by a process id (a, b, c) and a name (1, 2, 3, 4). Observe that the
left and right edges of the complex have the same sequence of labels, as do
the top and bottom edges; the complex thus folds up into a (twisted) torus.
(This is a poor imitation of part of [HS99, Figure 9].)
and m = 4 is exactly the same as trying to stretch a basketball into
an inner tube.

Chapter 29

Approximate agreement
1
The approximate agreement [DLP+ 86] or -agreement problem is
another relaxation of consensus where input and output values are real numbers, and a protocol is required to satisfy modified validity and agreement
conditions.
Let xi be the input of process i and yi its output. Then a protocol
satisfies approximate agreement if it satisfies:
Termination Every nonfaulty process eventually decides.
Validity Every process returns an output within the range of inputs. Formally, for all i, it holds that (minj xj ) yi (maxj xj ).
-agreement For all i and j, |i j| .
Unlike consensus, approximate agreement has wait-free algorithms for
asynchronous shared memory, which well see in 29.1). But a curious property of approximate agreement is that it has no bounded wait-free algorithms, even for two processes (see 29.2)

29.1

Algorithms for approximate agreement

Not only is approximate agreement solvable, its actually easily solvable, to

the point that there are many known algorithms for solving it.
Well use the algorithm of Moran [Mor95], mostly as presented in [AW04,

273

CHAPTER 29. APPROXIMATE AGREEMENT

274

Algorithm 54] but with a slight bug fix;1 pseudocode appears in Algorithm 29.1.2
The algorithm carries out a sequence of asynchronous rounds in which
processes adopt new values, such that the spread of the vector of all values
Vr in round r, defined as spread Vr = max Vr min Vr , drops by a factor of 2
per round. This is done by having each process choose a new value in each
round by taking the midpoint (average of min and max) of all the values it
sees in the previous round. Slow processes will jump to the maximum round
they see rather than propagating old values up from ancient rounds; this
is enough to guarantee that latecomer values that arrive after some process
writes in round 2 are ignored.
The algorithm uses a single snapshot object A to communicate, and each
process stores its initial input and a round number along with its current
preference. We assume that the initial values in this object all have round
number 0, and that log2 0 = (which avoids a special case in the termination test).
A[i] hxi , 1, xi i
repeat
hx01 , r1 , v1 i . . . hx0n , rn , vn i snapshot(A)
rmax maxj rj
v midpoint{vj | rj = rmax }
A[i] hxi , rmax + 1, vi
until rmax 2 and rmax log2 (spread({x0j })/)
return v
Algorithm 29.1: Approximate agreement

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

To show this works, we want to show that the midpoint operation guarantees that the spread shrinks by a factor of 2 in each round. Let Vr be the
set of all values v that are ever written to the snapshot object with round
1

The original algorithm from [AW04] does not include the test rmax 2. This allows
for bad executions in which process 1 writes its input of 0 in round 1 and takes a snapshot
that includes only its own input, after which process 2 runs the algorithm to completion
with input 1. Here process 2 will see 0 and 1 in round 1, and will write (1/2, 2, 1) to
A[2]; on subsequent iterations, it will see only the value 1/2 in the maximum round, and
after dlog2 (1/)e rounds it will decide on 1/2. But if we now wake process 1 up, it will
decided 0 immediately based on its snapshot, which includes only its own input and gives
spread(x) = 0. Adding the extra test prevents this from happening, as new values that
arrive after somebody writes round 2 will be ignored.
2
Showing that this particular algorithm works takes a lot of effort. If I were to do this
over, Id probably go with a different algorithm due to Schenk [Sch95].

CHAPTER 29. APPROXIMATE AGREEMENT

275

number r. Let Ur Vr be the set of values that are ever written to the snapshot object with round number r before some process writes a value with
round number r + 1 or greater; the intuition here is that Ur includes only
those values that might contribute to the computation of some round-(r + 1)
value.
Lemma 29.1.1. For all r for which Vr+1 is nonempty,
spread(Vr+1 ) spread(Ur )/2.
Uri

Proof. Let
be the set of round-r values observed by a process i in the
iteration in which it sees rmax = r in some iteration, if such an iteration
exists. Note that Uri Ur , because if some value with round r + 1 or greater
is written before is snapshot, then i will compute a larger value for rmax .
Given two processes i and j, we can argue from the properties of snapshot
that either Uri Urj or Urj Uri . The reason is that if is snapshot comes
first, then j sees at least as many round-r values as i does, because the only
way for a round-r value to disappear is if it is replaced by a value in a later
round. But in this case, process j will compute a larger value for rmax and
will not get a view for round r. The same holds in reverse if js snapshot
comes first.
Observe that if Uri Urj , then

midpoint(Uri ) midpoint(Urj ) spread(Urj )/2.

i

This holds because midpoint(Ur ) lies within the interval min Urj , max Urj ,
and every point in this interval is within spread(Urj )/2 of midpoint(Urj ). The
same holds if Urj Uri . So any two values written in round r + 1 are within
spread(Ur )/2 of each other.
In particular, the minimum and maximum values in Vr+1 are within
spread(Ur )/2 of each other, so spread(Vr+1 ) spread(Ur )/2.

Corollary 29.1.2. For all r 2 for which Vr is nonempty,

spread(Vr ) spread(U1 )/2r1 .
Proof. By induction on r. For r = 2, this is just Lemma 29.1.1. For larger
r, use the fact that Ur1 Vr1 and thus spread(Ur1 ) spread(Vr1 ) to
compute
spread(Vr ) spread(Ur1 )/2
spread(Vr1 )/2
(spread(U1 )/2r2 )/2
= spread(U1 )/2r1 .

CHAPTER 29. APPROXIMATE AGREEMENT

276

Let i be some process that finishes in the fewest number of rounds. Process i cant finish until it reaches round rmax +1, where rmax log2 (spread({x0j })/)
for a vector of input values x0 that it reads after some process writes round
2 or greater. We have spread({x0j }) spread(U1 ), because every value in
U1 is included in x0 . So rmax log2 (spread(U1 )/) and spread(Vrmax +1 )
spread(U1 )/2rmax spread(U1 )/(spread(U1 )/) = . Since any value returned is either included in Vrmax +1 or some later Vr0 Vrmax +1 , this gives
us that the spread of all the outputs is less than : Algorithm 29.1 solves
approximate agreement.
The cost of Algorithm 29.1 depends on the cost of the snapshot operations, on , and on the initial input spread D. For linear-cost snapshots,
this works out to O(n log(D/)).

29.2

Lower bound on step complexity

The dependence on D/ is necessary, at least for deterministic algorithms.

Here we give a lower bound due to Herlihy [Her91a], which shows that
any deterministic approximate agreement algorithm takes at least log3 (D/)
total steps even with just two processes.
Define the preference of a process in some configuration as the value it
will choose if it runs alone starting from this configuration. The preference
of a process p is well-defined because the process is deterministic; it also can
only change as a result of a write operation by another process q (because
no other operations are visible to p, and ps own operations cant change
its preference). The validity condition means that in an initial state, each
processs preference is equal to its input.
Consider an execution with two processes p and q, where p starts with
preference p0 and q starts with preference q0 . Run p until it is about to
perform a write that would change qs preference. Now run q until it is
about to change ps preference. If ps write no longer changes qs preference,
start p again and repeat until both p and q have pending writes that will
change the other processs preference. Let p1 and q1 be the new preferences
that result from these operations. The adversary can now choose between
running P only and getting to a configuration with preferences p0 and q1 ,
Q only and getting p1 and q0 , or both and getting p1 and q1 ; each of these
choices incurs at least one step. By the triangle inequality, |p0 q0 |
|p0 q1 | + |q1 p1 | + |p1 q0 |, so at least on of these configurations has
a spread between preferences that is at least 1/3 of the initial spread. It

CHAPTER 29. APPROXIMATE AGREEMENT

277

follows that after k steps the best spread we can get is D/3k , requiring
k log3 (D/) steps to get -agreement.
Herlihy uses this result to show that there are decisions problems that
have wait-free but not bounded wait-free deterministic solutions using registers. Curiously, the lower bound says nothing about the dependence on the
number of processes; it is conceivable that there is an approximate agreement protocol with running time that depends only on D/ and not n.

Appendix

278

Appendix A

Assignments
Assignments are typically due Wednesdays at 5:00pm. Assignments can be
turned in to Ennan Zhais mailbox on the first floor of AKW.

A.1

Assignment 1: due Wednesday, 2014-01-29,

at 5:00pm

Bureaucratic part
Send me email! My address is james.aspnes@gmail.com.
In your message, include:
1. Your name.
2. Your status: whether you are an undergraduate, grad student, auditor,
etc.
3. Anything else youd like to say.
(You will not be graded on the bureaucratic part, but you should do it
anyway.)

A.1.1

Counting evil processes

A connected bidirectional asynchronous network of n processes with identities has diameter D and may contain zero or more evil processes. Fortunately, the evil processes, if they exist, are not Byzantine, fully conform to
RFC 3514 [Bel03], and will correctly execute any code we provide for them.

279

APPENDIX A. ASSIGNMENTS

280

Suppose that all processes wake up at time 0 and start whatever protocol
we have given them. Suppose that each process initially knows whether it is
evil, and knows the identities of all of its neighbors. However, the processes
do not know the number of processes n or the diameter of the network D.
Give a protocol that allows every process to correctly return the number
of evil processes no later than time D. Your protocol should only return a
value once for each process (no converging to the correct answer after an
initial wrong guess).
Solution
There are a lot of ways to do this. Since the problem doesnt ask about
message complexity, well do it in a way that optimizes for algorithmic simplicity.
At time 0, each process initiates a separate copy of the flooding algorithm
(Algorithm 4.1). The message hp, N (p), ei it distributes consists of its own
identity, the identities of all of its neighbors, and whether or not it is evil.
In addition to the data for the flooding protocol, each process tracks a
set I of all processes it has seen that initiated a protocol and a set N of all
processes that have been mentioned as neighbors. The initial values of these
sets for process p are {p} and N (p), the neighbors of p.
Upon receiving a message hq, N (q), ei, a process adds q to I and N (q) to
N . As soon as I = N , the process returns a count of all processes for which
e = true.
Termination by D: Follows from the same analysis as flooding. Any
process at distance d from p has p I by time d, so I is complete by time
D.
S
Correct answer: Observe that N = iI N (i) always. Suppose that
there is some process q that is not in I. Since the graph is connected, there
is a path from p to q. Let r be the last node in this path in I, and let s be
the following node. Then s N \ I and N 6= I. By contraposition, if I = N
then I contains all nodes in the network, and so the count returned at this
time is correct.

A.1.2

Avoiding expensive processes

Suppose that you have a bidirectional but not necessarily complete asynchronous message-passing network represented by a graph G = (V, E) where
each node in V represents a process and each edge in E connects two processes that can send messages to each other. Suppose further that each

APPENDIX A. ASSIGNMENTS

281

process is assigned a weight 1 or 2. Starting at some initiator process, wed

like to construct a shortest-path tree, where each process points to one of
its neighbors as its parent, and following the parent pointers always gives a
path of minimum total weight to the initiator.1
Give a protocol that solves this problem with reasonable time, message,
and bit complexity, and show that it works.
Solution
Theres an ambiguity in the definition of total weight: does it include the
weight of the initiator and/or the initial node in the path? But since these
values are the same for all paths to the initiator from a given process, they
dont affect which is lightest.
If we dont care about bit complexity, there is a trivial solution: Use an
existing BFS algorithm followed by convergecast to gather the entire structure of the network at the initiator, run your favorite single-source shortestpath algorithm there, then broadcast the results. This has time complexity
O(D) and message complexity O(DE) if we use the BFS algorithm from
5.3. But the last couple of messages in the convergecast are going to be
pretty big.
A solution by reduction: Suppose that we construct a new graph G0
where each weight-2 node u in G is replaced by a clique of nodes u1 , u2 , . . . uk ,
with each node in the clique attached to a different neighbor of u. We then
run any breadth-first search protocol of our choosing on G0 , where each
weight-2 node simulates all members of the corresponding clique. Because
any path that passes through a clique picks up an extra edge, each path in
the breadth-first search tree has a length exactly equal to the sum of the
weights of the nodes other than its endpoints.
A complication is that if I am simulating k nodes, between them they
may have more than one parent pointer. So we define u.parent to be ui .parent
where ui is a node at minimum distance from the initiator in G0 . We also
re-route any incoming pointers to uj 6= ui to point to ui instead. Because
ui was chosen to have minimum distance, this never increases the length of
any path, and the resulting modified tree is a still a shortest-path tree.
Adding nodes blows up |E 0 |, but we dont need to actually send messages
between different nodes ui represented by the same process. So if we use the
1
Clarification added 2014-01-26: The actual number of hops is not relevant for the
construction of the shortest-path tree. By shortest path, we mean path of minimum total
weight.

APPENDIX A. ASSIGNMENTS

282

5.3 algorithm again, we only send up to D messages per real edge, giving
O(D) time and O(DE) messages.
If we dont like reductions, we could also tweak one of our existing algorithms. Gallagers layered BFS (5.2) is easily modified by changing the
depth bound for each round to a total-weight bound. The synchronizerbased BFS can also be modified to work, but the details are messy.

A.2
A.2.1

Assignment 2: due Wednesday, 2014-02-12,

at 5:00pm
Synchronous agreement with weak failures

Suppose that we modify the problem of synchronous agreement with crash

failures from Chapter 7 so that instead of crashing a process forever, the
adversary may jam some or all of its outgoing messages for a single round.
The adversary has limited batteries on its jamming equipment, and can
only cause f such one-round faults. There is no restriction on when these
one-round jamming faults occur: the adversary might jam f processes for
one round, one process for f rounds, or anything in between, so long as the
sum over all rounds of the number of processes jammed in each round is at
most f . For the purposes of agreement and validity, assume that a process
is non-faulty if it is never jammed.2
As a function of f and n, how many rounds does it take to reach agreement in the worst case in this model, under the usual assumptions that
processes are deterministic and the algorithm must satisfy agreement, termination, and validity? Give the best upper and lower bounds that you
can.
Solution

The par solution for this is an ( f ) lower bound and O(f ) upper bound.
I dont know if it is easy to do better than this.
For the lower bound, observe that the adversary can simulate an ordinary
crash failure by jamming a process in every round starting in the round it
crashes in. This means that in an r-round protocol, we can simulate k crash
failures with kr jamming faults. From the Dolev-Strong lower bound [DS83]
2

Clarifications added 2014-02-10: We assume that processes dont know that they are
being jammed or which messages are lost (unless the recipient manages to tell them that
a message was not delivered). As in the original model, we assume a complete network
and that all processes have known identities.

APPENDIX A. ASSIGNMENTS

283

(see also Chapter 7), we know that there is no r-round protocol with k = r
crash failures faults, so there isno r-round protocol with r2 jamming faults.
f + 1 on the number of rounds needed to
This gives a lower bound of
solve synchronous agreement with f jamming faults.3
For the upper bound, have every process broadcast its input every round.
After f +1 rounds, there is at least one round in which no process is jammed,
so every process learns all the inputs and can take, say, the majority value.

A.2.2

Byzantine agreement with contiguous faults

Suppose that we restrict the adversary in Byzantine agreement to corrupting

a connected subgraph of the network; the idea is that the faulty nodes need
to coordinate, but cant relay messages through the non-faulty nodes to do
so.
Assume the usual model for Byzantine agreement with a network in the
form of an m m torus. This means that each node has a position (x, y)
in {0, . . . , m 1} {0, . . . , m 1}, and its neighbors are the four nodes
(x + 1 mod m, y), (x 1 mod m, y), (x, y + 1 mod m), and (x, y 1 mod m).
For sufficiently large m,4 what is the largest number of faults f ; that
this system can tolerate and still solve Byzantine agreement?
Solution
The relevant bound here is the requirement that the network have enough
connectivity that the adversary cant take over half of a vertex cut (see
8.1.3). This is complicated slightly by the requirement that the faulty
nodes be contiguous.
The smallest vertex cut in a sufficiently large torus consists of the four
neighbors of a single node; however, these nodes are not connected. But we
can add a third node to connect two of them (see Figure A.1).
By adapting the usual lower bound we can use this construction to show
that f = 3 faults are enough to prevent agreement when m 3. The
question then is whether f = 2 faults is enough.
By a case analysis, we can show that any two nodes in a sufficiently
large torus are either adjacent themselves or can be connected by three
paths, where no two paths have adjacent vertices. Assume without loss of
3

Since Dolev-Strong only needs to crash one process per round, we dont really need
the full r jamming faults for processes that crash late. This could be used to improve the
constant for this argument.
4
Problem modified 2014-02-03. In the original version, it asked to compute f for all
m, but there are some nasty special cases when m is small.

APPENDIX A. ASSIGNMENTS

284

Figure A.1: Connected Byzantine nodes take over half a cut

generality that one of the nodes is at position (0, 0). Then any other node
is covered by one of the following cases:
1. Nodes adjacent to (0, 0). These can communicate directly.
2. Nodes at (0, i) or (i, 0). These cases are symmetric, so well describe
the solution for (0, i). Run one path directly north: (0, 1), (0, 2), . . . , (0, i
1). Similarly, run a second path south: (0, 1), (0, 2), . . . (0, i + 1).
For the third path, take two steps east and then run north and back
west: (1, 0), (2, 0), (2, 1), (2, 2), . . . , (2, i), (1, i). These paths are all
non-adjacent as long as m 4.
3. Nodes at (1, i) or (i, 1), where i is not 1, 0, or 1. Suppose the node
is at (1, i). Run one path east then north through (1, 0), (1, 1), . . . , (1, i
1). The other two paths run south and west, with a sideways jog in the
middle as needed. This works for m sufficiently large to make room
for the sideways jogs.
4. Nodes at (1, 1) or (i, j) where neither of i or j is 1, 0, or 1. Now we
can run one path north then east, one east then north, one south then
west, and one west then south, creating four paths in a figure-eight
pattern centered on (0, 0).

A.3
A.3.1

Assignment 3: due Wednesday, 2014-02-26,

at 5:00pm
Among the elect

The adversary has decided to be polite and notify each non-faulty processes
when he gives up crashing it. Specifically, we have the usual asynchronous
message-passing system with up to f faulty processes, but every non-faulty
process is eventually told that it is non-faulty. (Faulty processes are told
nothing.)

APPENDIX A. ASSIGNMENTS

285

For what values of f can you solve consensus in this model?

Solution
We can tolerate f < n/2, but no more.
If f < n/2, the following algorithm works: Run Paxos, where each
process i waits to learn that it is non-faulty, then acts as a proposer for
proposal number i. The highest-numbered non-faulty process then carries
out a proposal round that succeeds because no higher proposal is ever issued,
and both the proposer (which is non-faulty) and a majority of accepters
participate.
If f n/2, partition the processes into two groups of size bn/2c, with
any leftover process crashing immediately. Make all of the processes in both
groups non-faulty, and tell each of them this at the start of the protocol.
Now do the usual partitioning argument: Run group 0 with inputs 0 with no
messages delivered from group 1 until all processes decide 0 (we can do this
because the processes cant distinguish this execution from one in which
the group 1 processes are in fact faulty). Run group 1 similarly until all
processes decide 1. We have then violated agreement, assuming we didnt
previously violate termination of validity.

A.3.2

Failure detectors on the cheap

Suppose we do not have the budget to equip all of our machines with failure
detectors. Instead, we order an eventually strong failure detector for k
machines, and the remaining n k machines get fake failure detectors that
never suspect anybody. The choice of which machines get the real failure
detectors and which get the fake ones is under the control of the adversary.
This means that every faulty process is eventually permanently suspected
by every non-faulty process with a real failure detector, and there is at
least one non-faulty process that is eventually permanently not suspected
by anybody. Lets call the resulting failure detector Sk .
Let f be the number of actual failures. Under what conditions on f , k,
and n can you still solve consensus in the usual deterministic asynchronous
message-passing model using Sk ?
Solution
First observe that S can simulate Sk for any k by having n k processes
ignore the output of their failure detectors. So we need f < n/2 by the
usual lower bound on S.

APPENDIX A. ASSIGNMENTS

286

If f k, we are also in trouble. The f > k case is easy: If there exists

a consensus protocol for f > k, then we can transform it into a consensus
protocol for n k processes and f k failures, with no failure detectors
at all, by pretending that there are an extra k processes with real failure
detectors that crash immediately. The FLP impossibility result rules this
out.
If f = k, we have to be a little more careful. By immediately crashing
f 1 processes with real failure detectors, we can reduce to the f = k = 1
case. Now the adversary runs the FLP strategy. If no processes crash, then
all n k + 1 surviving process report no failures; if it becomes necessary to
crash a process, this becomes the one remaining process with the real failure
detector. In either case the adversary successfully prevents consensus.
So let f < k. Then we have weak completeness, because every faulty
process is eventually permanently suspected by at least k f > 0 processes.
We also have weak accuracy, because it is still the case that some process
is eventually permanently never suspected by anybody. By boosting weak
completeness to strong completeness as described in 11.2.3, we can turn
out failure detector into S, meaning we can solve consensus precisely when
f < min(k, n/2).

A.4
A.4.1

Assignment 4: due Wednesday, 2014-03-26,

at 5:00pm
A global synchronizer with a global clock

Consider an asynchronous message-passing system with n processes in a

bidirectional ring with no failures. Suppose that the processes are equipped
with a global clock, which causes a local event to occur simultaneously at
each process every c time units, where as usual 1 is the maximum message
delay. We would like to use this global clock to build a global synchronizer.
Provided c is at least 1, a trivial approach is to have every process advance
to the next round whenever the clock pulse hits. This gives one synchronous
round every c time units.
Suppose that c is greater than 1 but still o(n). Is it possible to build
a global synchronizer in this model that runs more than a constant ratio
faster than this trivial global synchronizer in the worst case?

APPENDIX A. ASSIGNMENTS

A.4.2

287

A message-passing counter

A counter is a shared object that support operations inc and read, where
read returns the number of previous inc operations.
Algorithm A.1 purports to implement a counter in an asynchronous
message-passing system subject to f < n/2 crash failures. In the algorithm, each process i maintains a vector ci of contributions to the counter
from all the processes, as well as a nonce ri used to distinguish responses to
different read operations from each other. All of these values are initially
zero.
Show that the implemented counter is linearizable, or give an example
of an execution where it isnt.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

procedure inc
ci [i] ci [i] + 1
Send ci [i] to all processes.
Wait to receive ack(ci [i]) from a majority of processes.
upon receiving c from j do
ci [j] max(ci [j], c)
Send ack(c) to j.
procedure read
ri ri + 1
Send read(ri ) to all processes.
Wait to receive respond(ri , cj ) from a majority of processes j.
P
return k maxj cj [k]
upon receiving read(r) from j do
Send respond(r, ci ) to j
Algorithm A.1: Counter algorithm for Problem A.4.2.

A.5
A.5.1

Assignment 5: due Wednesday, 2014-04-09,

at 5:00pm
A concurrency detector

Consider the following optimistic mutex-like object, which we will call a

concurrency detector. A concurrency detector supports two operations
for each process i, enteri and exiti . These operations come in pairs: a

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288

process enters a critical section by executing enteri , and leaves by executing

exiti . The behavior of the object is undefined if a process calls enteri twice
without an intervening exiti , or calls exiti without first calling enteri .
Unlike mutex, a concurrency detector does not enforce that only one
process is in the critical section at a time; instead, exiti returns 1 if the
interval between it and the previous enteri overlaps with some interval
between a enterj and corresponding exitj for some j 6= i, and returns 0 if
there is no overlap.
Is there a deterministic linearizable wait-free implementation of a concurrency detector from atomic registers? If there is, give an implementation.
If there is not, give an impossibility proof.
Solution
It is not possible to implement this object using atomic registers.
Suppose that there were such an implementation. Algorithm A.2 implements two-process consensus using a two atomic registers and a single
concurrency detector, initialized to the state following enter1 .
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

procedure consensus1 (v)

r1 v
if exit1 () = 1 then
return r2
else
return v
procedure consensus2 (v)
r2 v
enter2 ()
if exit2 () = 1 then
return v
else
return r1

Algorithm A.2: Two-process consensus using the object from Problem A.5.1
Termination is immediate from the absence of loops in the code.
To show validity and termination, observe that one of two cases holds:
1. Process 1 executes exit1 before process 2 executes enter2 . In this

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289

case there is no overlap between the interval formed by the implicit

enter1 and exit1 and the interval formed by enter2 and exit2 . So
the exit1 and exit2 operations both return 0, causing process 1 to
return its own value and process 2 to return the contents of r1 . These
will equal process 1s value, because process 2s read follows its call to
enter2 , which follows exit1 and thus process 1s write to r1 .
2. Process 1 executes exit1 after process 2 executes enter2 . Now both
exit operations return 1, and so process 2 returns its own value while
process 1 returns the contents of r2 , which it reads after process 2
writes its value there.
In either case, both processes return the value of the first process to
access the concurrency detector, satisfying both agreement and validity.
This would give a consensus protocol for two processes implemented from
atomic registers, contradicting the impossibility result of Loui and AbuAmara [LAA87].

A.5.2

Two-writer sticky bits

A two-writer sticky bit is a sticky bit that can be read by any process,
but that can only be written to by two specific processes.
Suppose that you have an unlimited collection of two-writer sticky bits
for each pair of processes, plus as many ordinary atomic registers as you
need. What is the maximum number of processes for which you can solve
wait-free binary consensus?
Solution
If n = 2, then a two-writer sticky bit is equivalent to a sticky bit, so we can
solve consensus.
If n 3, suppose that we maneuver our processes as usual to a bivalent
configuration C with no bivalent successors. Then there are three pending
operations x, y, and z, that among them produce both 0-valent and 1-valent
configurations. Without loss of generality, suppose that Cx and Cy are both
0-valent and Cz is 1-valent. We now consider what operations these might
be.
1. If x and z apply to different objects, then Cxz = Czx must be both
0-valent and 1-valent, a contradiction. Similarly if y and z apply to
different objects. This shows that all three operations apply to the
same object O.

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2. If O is a register, then the usual case analysis of Loui and AbuAmara [LAA87] gives us a contradiction.
3. If O is a two-writer sticky bit, then we can split cases further based
on z:
(a) If z is a read, then either:
i. At least one of x and y is a read. But then Cxz = Czx or
Cyz = Czy, and we are in trouble.
ii. Both x and y are writes. But then Czx (1-valent) is indistinguishable from Cx (0-valent) by the two processes that
didnt perform z: more trouble.
(b) If z is a write, then at least one of x or y is a read; suppose its
x. Then Cxz is indistinguishable from Cz by the two processes
that didnt perform x.
Since we reach a contradiction in all cases, it must be that when n 3,
every bivalent configuration has a bivalent successor, which shows that we
cant solve consensus in this case. The maximum value of n for which we
can solve consensus is 2.

A.6
A.6.1

Assignment 6: due Wednesday, 2014-04-23,

at 5:00pm
A rotate register

Suppose that you are asked to implement a concurrent m-bit register that
supports in addition to the usual read and write operations a RotateLeft
operation that rotates all the bits to the left; this is equivalent to doing a
left shift (multiplying the value in the register by two) followed by replacing
the lowest-order bit with the previous highest-order bit.
For example, if the register contains 1101, and we do RotateLeft, it now
contains 1011.
Show that if m is sufficiently large as a function of the number of processes n, (n) steps per operation in the worst case are necessary and sufficient to implement a linearizable wait-free m-bit shift register from atomic
registers.

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291

Solution
The necessary part is easier, although we cant use JTT (Chapter 20) directly because having write operations means that our rotate register is not
perturbable. Instead, we argue that if we initialize the register to 1, we
get a mod-m counter, where increment is implemented by RotateLeft and
read is implemented by taking the log of the actual value of the counter.
Letting m 2n gives the desired (n) lower bound, since a mod-2n counter
is perturbable.
For sufficiency, well show how to implement the rotate register using
snapshots. This is pretty much a standard application of known techniques [AH90b, AM93], but its not a bad exercise to write it out.
Pseudocode for one possible solution is given in Algorithm A.3.
The register is implemented using a single snapshot array A. Each entry
in the snapshot array holds four values: a timestamp and process id indicating which write the processs most recent operations apply to, the initial
write value corresponding to this timestamp, and the number of rotate operations this process has applied to this value. A write operation generates
a new timestamp, sets the written value to its input, and resets the rotate
count to 0. A rotate operation updates the timestamp and associated write
value to the most recent that the process sees, and adjusts the rotate count
as appropriate. A read operation combines all the rotate counts associated
with the most recent write to obtain the value of the simulated register.
Since each operation requires one snapshot and at most one update, the
cost is O(n) using the linear-time snapshot algorithm of Inoue et al. [IMCT94].
Linearizability is easily verified by observing that ordering all operations by
the maximum timestamp/process tuple that they compute and then by the
total number of rotations that they observe produces an ordering consistent with the concurrent execution for which all return values of reads are
correct.

A.6.2

A randomized two-process test-and-set

Algorithm A.4 gives pseudocode for a protocol for two processes p0 and p1 .
It uses two shared unbounded single-writer atomic registers r0 and r1 , both
initially 0. Each process also has a local variable s.
1. Show that any return values of the protocol are consistent with a
linearizable, single-use test-and-set.

APPENDIX A. ASSIGNMENTS

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

8
9

10
11
12
13
14

procedure write(A, v)
s snapshot(A)
A[id] hmaxi s[i].timestamp + 1, id, v, 0i
procedure RotateLeft(A)
s snapshot(A)
Let i maximize hs[i].timestamp, s[i].processi
if s[i].timestamp = A[id].timestamp and
s[i].process = A[id].process then
// Increment my rotation count
A[id].rotations A[id].rotations + 1
else
// Reset and increment my rotation count
A[id] hs[i].timestamp, s[i].process, s[i].value, 1i
procedure read(A)
s snapshot(A)
Let i maximize hs[i].timestamp, s[i].processi
Let
P
r = j,s[j].timestamp=s[i].timestamps[j].process=s[i].process s[j].rotations
return s[i].value rotated r times.
Algorithm A.3: Implementation of a rotate register

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

procedure TASi ()
while true do
with probability 1/2 do
ri ri + 1
else
ri ri
s ri
if s > ri then
return 1
else if s < ri 1 do
return 0
Algorithm A.4: Randomized two-process test-and-set for A.6.2

292

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293

2. Will this protocol always terminate with probability 1 assuming an

oblivious adversary?
3. Will this protocol always terminate with probability 1 assuming an
adaptive adversary?
Solution
1. To show that this implements a linearizable test-and-set, we need to
show that exactly one process returns 0 and the other 1, and that
if one process finishes before the other starts, the first process to go
returns 1.
Suppose that pi finishes before pi starts. Then pi reads only 0 from
ri , and cannot observe ri < ri : pi returns 0 in this case.
We now show that the two processes cannot return the same value.
Suppose that both processes terminate. Let i be such that pi reads ri
for the last time before pi reads ri for the last time. If pi returns 0,
then it observes ri ri + 2 at the time of its read; pi can increment
ri at most once before reading ri again, and so observed ri < ri and
returns 1.
Alternatively, if pi returns 1, it observed ri < ri . Since it performs
no more increments on ri , pi also observes ri < ri in all subsequent
reads, and so cannot also return 1.
2. Lets run the protocol with an oblivious adversary, and track the value
of r0t r1t over time, where rit is the value of ri after t writes (to either
register). Each write to r0 increases this value by 1/2 on average, with
a change of 0 or 1 equally likely, and each write to r1 decreases it by
1/2 on average.
To make things look symmetric, let t be the change caused by the
t-th write and write t as ct + X t where ct = 1/2 is a constant
determined by whether p0 or p1 does the t-th write and X t = 1/2 is
a random variable with expectation 0. Observe that the X t variables
are independent of each other and the constants ct (which depend only
on the schedule).
For
t thet protocol to run forever, at every time t it must hold that
r r 3; otherwise, even after one or both processes does its
0
1
0

0

next write, we will have r0t r1t and the next process to read will

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terminate. But

t

X

t

s
r0 r1t =

s=1

t

X

= (cs + Xs )

s=1

t
t

X
X

cs +
Xs .
=

s=1

s=1

The left-hand sum is a constant, while the right-hand sum has a binomial distribution. For any fixed constant, the probability that a
binomial distribution lands within 2 of the constant goes to zero in
the limit as t , so with probability 1 there is some t for which
this event does not occur.
3. For an adaptive adversary, the following strategy prevents agreement:
(a) Run p0 until it is about to increment r0 .
(b) Run p1 until it is about to increment r1 .
(c) Allow both increments to proceed and repeat.
The effect is that both processes always observe r0 = r1 whenever
they do a read, and so never finish. This works because the adaptive
adversary can see the coin-flips done by the processes before they act
on them; it would not work with an oblivious adversary or in a model
that supported probabilistic writes.

A.7

CS465/CS565 Final Exam, May 2nd, 2014

A.7.1

Maxima (20 points)

Some deterministic processes organized in an anonymous, synchronous ring

are each given an integer input (which may or may not be distinct from other
processes inputs), but otherwise run the same code and do not know the

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295

size of the ring. We would like the processes to each compute the maximum
input. As usual, each process may only return an output once, and must do
so after a finite number of rounds, although it may continue to participate
in the protocol (say, by relaying messages) even after it returns an output.
Prove or disprove: It is possible to solve this problem in this model.
Solution
Its not possible.
Consider an execution with n = 3 processes, each with input 0. If the
protocol is correct, then after some finite number of rounds t, each process
returns 0. By symmetry, the processes all have the same states and send
the same messages throughout this execution.
Now consider a ring of size 2(t + 1) where every process has input 0,
except for one process p that has input 1. Let q be the process at maximum
distance from p. By induction on r, we can show that after r rounds of
communication, every process that is more than r + 1 hops away from p has
the same state as all of the processes in the 3-process execution above. So
in particular, after t rounds, process q (at distance t + 1) is in the same state
as it would be in the 3-process execution, and thus it returns 0. Butas it
learns to its horror, one round too latethe correct maximum is 1.

A.7.2

Historyless objects (20 points)

Recall that a shared-memory object is historyless if any operation on the

object either (a) always leaves the object in the same state as before the
operation, or (b) always leaves the object in a new state that doesnt depend
on the state before the operation.
What is the maximum possible consensus number for a historyless object? That is, for what value n is it possible to solve wait-free consensus
for n processes using some particular historyless object but not possible to
solve wait-free consensus for n + 1 processes using any historyless object?
Solution
Test-and-sets are (a) historyless, and (b) have consensus number 2, so n is
at least 2.
To show that no historyless object can solve wait-free 3-process consensus, consider an execution that starts in a bivalent configuration and runs
to a configuration C with two pending operations x and y such that Cx is
0-valent and Cy is 1-valent. By the usual arguments x and y must both be

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operations on the same object. If either of x and y is a read operation, then

(0-valent) Cxy and (1-valent) Cyx are indistinguishable to a third process
pz if run alone, because the object is left in the same state in both configurations; whichever way pz decides, it will give a contradiction in an execution
starting with one of these configurations. If neither of x and y is a read,
then x overwrites y, and Cx is indistinguishable from Cyxto pz if pz runs
alone; again we get a contradiction.

A.7.3

Hams (20 points)

Hamazon, LLC, claims to be the worlds biggest delivery service for canned
hams, with guaranteed delivery of a canned ham to your home anywhere
on Earth via suborbital trajectory from secret launch facilities at the North
and South Poles. Unfortunately, these launch facilities may be subject to
crash failures due to inclement weather, trademark infringement actions, or
military retaliation for misdirected hams.
For this problem, you are to evaluate Hamazons business model from
the perspective of distributed algorithms. Consider a system consisting of
a client process and two server processes (corresponding to the North and
South Pole facilities) that communicate by means of asynchronous message
passing. In addition to the usual message-passing actions, each server also
has an irrevocable launch action that launches a ham at the client. As with
messages, hams are delivered asynchronously: it is impossible for the client
to tell if a ham has been launched until it arrives.
A ham protocol is correct provided (a) a client that orders no ham receives no ham; and (b) a client that orders a ham receives exactly one ham.
Show that there can be no correct deterministic protocol for this problem if
one of the servers can crash.
Solution
Consider an execution in which the client orders ham. Run the northern
server together with the client until the server is about to issue a launch
action (if it never does so, the client receives no ham when the southern
server is faulty).
Now run the client together with the southern server. There are two
cases:
1. If the southern server ever issues launch, execute both this and the
northern servers launch actions: the client gets two hams.

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2. If the southern server never issues launch, never run the northern
server again: the client gets no hams.
In either case, the one-ham rule is violated, and the protocol is not
correct.5

A.7.4

Mutexes (20 points)

A swap register s has an operation swap(s, v) that returns the argument to

the previous call to swap, or if it is the first such operation applied to the
register. Its easy to build a mutex from a swap register by treating it as a
test-and-set: to grab the mutex, I swap in 1, and if I get back I win (and
otherwise try again); and to release the mutex, I put back .
Unfortunately, this implementation is not starvation-free: some other
process acquiring the mutex repeatedly might always snatch the away
just before I try to swap it out. Algorithm A.5 uses a swap object s along
with an atomic register r to try to fix this.
1
2
3
4

procedure mutex()
predecessor swap(s, myId)
while r 6= predecessor do
try again
// Start of critical section
...
// End of critical section
r myId
Algorithm A.5: Mutex using a swap object and register

Prove that Algorithm A.5 gives a starvation-free mutex, or give an example of an execution where it fails. You should assume that s and r are
both initialized to .
5
Its tempting to try to solve this problem by reduction from a known impossibility
result, like Two Generals or FLP. For these specific problems, direct reductions dont
appear to work. Two Generals assumes message loss, but in this model, messages are not
lost. FLP needs any process to be able to fail, but in this model, the client never fails.
Indeed, we can solve consensus in the Hamazon model by just having the client transmit
its input to both servers.

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Solution
Because processes use the same id if they try to access the mutex twice, the
algorithm doesnt work.
Heres an example of a bad execution:
1. Process 1 swaps 1 into s and gets , reads from r, performs its
critical section, and writes 1 to r.
2. Process 2 swaps 2 into s and gets 1, reads 1 from r, and enters the
critical section.
3. Process 1 swaps 1 into s and gets 2, and spins waiting to see 2 in r.
4. Process 3 swaps 3 into s and gets 1. Because r is still 1, process 3 reads
this 1 and enters the critical section. We now have two processes in
the critical section, violating mutual exclusion.
I believe this works if each process adopts a new id every time it calls
mutex, but the proof is a little tricky.6

The simplest proof I can come up with is to apply an invariant that says that (a)
the processes that have executed swap(s, myId) but have not yet left the while loop have
predecessor values that form a linked list, with the last pointer either equal to (if no
process has yet entered the critical section) or the last process to enter the critical section;
(b) r is if no process has yet left the critical section, or the last process to leave the
critical section otherwise; and (c) if there is a process that is in the critical section, its
predecessor field points to the last process to leave the critical section. Checking the effects
of each operation shows that this invariant is preserved through the execution, and (a)
combined with (c) show that we cant have two processes in the critical section at the
same time. Additional work is still needed to show starvation-freedom. Its a good thing
this algorithm doesnt work as written.

Appendix B

Sample assignments from

Fall 2011
B.1

Assignment 1: due Wednesday, 2011-09-28, at

17:00

Bureaucratic part
Send me email! My address is aspnes@cs.yale.edu.
In your message, include:
1. Your name.
2. Your status: whether you are an undergraduate, grad student, auditor,
etc.
3. Anything else youd like to say.
(You will not be graded on the bureaucratic part, but you should do it
anyway.)

B.1.1

Anonymous algorithms on a torus

An n m torus is a two-dimensional version of a ring, where a node at

position (i, j) has a neighbor to the north at (i, j 1), the east at (i + 1, j),
the south at (i, j + 1), and the west at (i 1, j). These values wrap around
modulo n for the first coordinate and modulo m for the second; so (0, 0) has
neighbors (0, m 1), (1, 0), (0, 1), and (n 1, 0).

299

APPENDIX B. SAMPLE ASSIGNMENTS FROM FALL 2011

300

Suppose that we have a synchronous message-passing network in the

form of an n m torus, consisting of anonymous, identical processes that do
not know n, m, or their own coordinates, but do have a sense of direction
(meaning they can tell which of their neighbors is north, east, etc.).
Prove or disprove: Under these conditions, there is a deterministic1 algorithm that computes whether n > m.
Solution
Disproof: Consider two executions, one in an n m torus and one in an
m n torus where n > m and both n and m are at least 2.2 Using the same
argument as in Lemma 6.1.1, show by induction on the round number that,
for each round r, all processes in both executions have the same state. It
follows that if the processes correctly detect n > m in the n m execution,
then they incorrectly report m > n in the m n execution.

B.1.2

Clustering

Suppose that k of the nodes in an asynchronous message-passing network

are designated as cluster heads, and we want to have each node learn the
identity of the nearest head. Given the most efficient algorithm you can for
this problem, and compute its worst-case time and message complexities.
You may assume that processes have unique identifiers and that all processes know how many neighbors they have.3
Solution
The simplest approach would be to run either of the efficient distributed
breadth-first search algorithms from Chapter 5 simultaneously starting at
all cluster heads, and have each process learn the distance to all cluster heads
at once and pick the nearest one. This gives O(D2 ) time and O(k(E + V D))
messages if we use layering and O(D) time and O(kDE) messages using
local synchronization.
We can get rid of the dependence on k in the local-synchronization algorithm by running it almost unmodified, with the only difference being the
attachment of a cluster head id to the exactly messages. The simplest way to
show that the resulting algorithm works is to imagine coalescing all cluster
1

Clarification added 2011-09-28.

This last assumption is not strictly necessary, but it avoids having to worry about
what it means when a process sends a message to itself.
3
Clarification added 2011-09-26.
2

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301

heads into a single initiator; the clustering algorithm effectively simulates

the original algorithm running in this modified graph, and the same proof
goes through. The running time is still O(D) and the message complexity
O(DE).

B.1.3

Negotiation

Two merchants A and B are colluding to fix the price of some valuable
commodity, by sending messages to each other for r rounds in a synchronous
message-passing system. To avoid the attention of antitrust regulators, the
merchants are transmitting their messages via carrier pigeons, which are
unreliable and may become lost. Each merchant has an initial price pA or
pB , which are integer values satisfying 0 p m for some known value
m, and their goal is to choose new prices p0A and p0B , where |p0A p0B | 1.
If pA = pB and no messages are lost, they want the stronger goal that
p0A = p0B = pA = pB .
Prove the best lower bound you can on r, as a function of m, for all
protocols that achieve these goals.
Solution
This is a thinly-disguised version of the Two Generals Problem from Chapter 3, with the agreement condition p0A = p0B replaced by an approximate
agreement condition |p0A p0B | 1. We can use a proof based on the
indistinguishability argument in 3.2 to show that r m/2.
Fix r, and suppose that in a failure-free execution both processes send
messages in all rounds (we can easily modify an algorithm that does not
have this property to have it, without increasing r). We will start with a
sequence of executions with pA = pB = 0. Let X0 be the execution in which
no messages are lost, X1 the execution in which As last message is lost,
X2 the execution in which both A and Bs last messages are lost, and so
on, with Xk for 0 k 2r losing k messages split evenly between the two
processes, breaking ties in favor of losing messages from A.
When i is even, Xi is indistinguishable from Xi+1 by A; it follows that
p0A is the same in both executions. Because we no longer have agreement,
it may be that p0B (Xi ) and p0B (Xi+1 ) are not the same as p0A in either execution; but since both are within 1 of p0A , the difference between them is
at most 2. Next, because Xi+1 to Xi+2 are indistinguishable to B, we have
p0B (Xi+1 ) = p0B (Xi+2 ), which we can combine with the previous claim to get
|p0B (Xi ) p0B (Xi+2 )|. A simple induction then gives p0B (X2r ) 2r, where

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302

X2r is an execution in which all messages are lost.

Now construct executions X2r+1 and X2r+2 by changing pA and pB to
m one at a time. Using essentially the same argument as before, we get
|p0B (X2r ) p0B (X2r+2 )| 2 and thus p0B (X2r+2 ) 2r + 2.
Repeat the initial 2r steps backward to get to an execution X4r+2 with
pA = pB = m and no messages lost. Applying the same reasoning as above
shows m = p0B (X4r+2 ) 4r + 2 or r m2
4 = (m).
Though it is not needed for the solution, it is not too hard to unwind
the lower bound argument to extract an algorithm that matches the lower
bound up to a small constant factor. For simplicity, lets assume m is even.
The protocol is to send my input in the first message and then use m/21
subsequent acknowledgments, stopping immediately if I ever fail to receive
a message in some round; the total number of rounds r is exactly m/2. If
I receive s messages in the first s rounds, I decide on min(pA , pB ) if that
value lies in [m/2 s, m/2 + s] and the nearest endpoint otherwise. (Note
that if s = 0, I dont need to compute min(pA , pB ), and if s > 0, I can do
so because I know both inputs.)
This satisfies the approximate agreement condition because if I see only
s messages, you see at most s + 1, because I stop sending once I miss a
message. So either we both decide min(pA , pB ) or we choose endpoints
m/2 sA and m/2 sB that are within 1 of each other. It also satisfies the
validity condition p0A = p0B = pA = pB when both inputs are equal and no
messages are lost (and even the stronger requirement that p0A = p0B when no
messages are lost), because in this case [m/2 s, m/2 + s] is exactly [0, m]
and both processes decide min(pA , pB ).
There is still a factor-of-2 gap between the upper and lower bounds. My
guess would be that the correct bound is very close to m/2 on both sides,
and that my lower bound proof is not quite clever enough.

B.2
B.2.1

Assignment 2: due Wednesday, 2011-11-02, at

17:00
Consensus with delivery notifications

The FLP bound (Chapter 9) shows that we cant solve consensus in an

asynchronous system with one crash failure. Part of the reason for this is
that only the recipient can detect when a message is delivered, so the other
processes cant distinguish between a configuration in which a message has
or has not been delivered to a faulty process.

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Suppose that we augment the system so that senders are notified immediately when their messages are delivered. We can model this by making the
delivery of a single message an event that updates the state of both sender
and recipient, both of which may send additional messages in response. Let
us suppose that this includes attempted deliveries to faulty processes, so
that any non-faulty process that sends a message m is eventually notified
that m has been delivered (although it might not have any effect on the
recipient if the recipient has already crashed).
1. Show that this system can solve consensus with one faulty process
when n = 2.
2. Show that this system cannot solve consensus with two faulty processes
when n = 3.
Solution
1. To solve consensus, each process sends its input to the other. Whichever
input is delivered first becomes the output value for both processes.
2. To show impossibility with n = 3 and two faults, run the usual FLP
proof until we get to a configuration C with events e0 and e such that
Ce is 0-valent and Ce0 e is 1-valent (or vice versa). Observe that e
and e0 may involve two processes each (sender and receiver), for up
to four processes total, but only a process that is involved in both e
and e0 can tell which happened first. There can be at most two such
processes. Kill both, and get that Ce0 e is indistinguishable from Cee0
for the remaining process, giving the usual contradiction.

B.2.2

A circular failure detector

Suppose we equip processes 0 . . . n 1 in an asynchronous message-passing

system with n processes subject to crash failures with a failure detector that
is strongly accurate (no non-faulty process is ever suspected) and causes
process i + 1 (mod n) to eventually permanently suspect process i if process
i crashes. Note that this failure detector is not even weakly complete (if
both i and i + 1 crash, no non-faulty process suspects i). Note also that the
ring structure of the failure detector doesnt affect the actual network: even
though only process i + 1 (mod n) may suspect process i, any process can
send messages to any other process.
Prove the best upper and lower bounds you can on the largest number
of failures f that allows solving consensus in this system.

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Solution
There is an easy reduction to FLP that shows f n/2 is necessary (when n

is even), and a harder reduction that shows f < 2 n 1 is necessary. The

easy reduction is based on crashing every other process; now no surviving
process can suspect any other survivor, and we are back in an asynchronous
message-passing system with no failure detector and 1 remaining failure (if
f is at least n/2 + 1).

The harder reduction is to crash every ( n)-th process. This partitions

the ring into n segments of length n 1 each, where there is no failure

detector in any segment that suspects any process in another segment. If an
algorithm exists that solves consensus in this situation, then it does so even
if (a) all processes in each segment have the same input, (b) if any process

in one segment crashes, all n 1 process in the segment crash, and (c) if
any process in a segment takes a step, all take a step, in some fixed order.
Under this additional conditions, each segment can be simulated by a single
process in an asynchronous system with no failure detectors, and the extra

n 1 failures in 2 n 1 correspond to one failure in the simulation. But

we cant solve consensus in the simulating system (by FLP), so we cant
solve it in the original system either.
On the other side, lets first boost completeness of the failure detector,
by having any process that suspects another transmit this submission by
reliable broadcast. So now if any non-faulty process i suspects i + 1, all the
non-faulty processes will suspect i + 1. Now with up to t failures, whenever
I learn that process i is faulty (through a broadcast message passing on the
suspicion of the underlying failure detector, I will suspect processes i + 1
through i + t f as well, where f is the number of failures I have heard
about directly. I dont need to suspect process i + t f + 1 (unless there is
some intermediate process that has also failed), because the only way that
this process will not be suspected eventually is if every process in the range
i to i + t f is faulty, which cant happen given the bound t.
Now if t is small enough that I cant cover the entire ring with these
segments, then there is some non-faulty processes that is far enough away
from the nearest preceding faulty process that it is never suspected: this
gives us an eventually strong failure detector, and we can solve consensus
using the standard Chandra-Toueg S algorithm from 11.4 or [CT96]. The
inequality I am looking for is f (t f ) < n, where the
left-hand side is
2
maximized by setting
f = t/2, which gives t /4 < n or t < 2n. This leaves

a gap of about 2 between the upper and lower bounds; I dont know which
one can be improved.

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I am indebted to Hao Pan for suggesting the ( n) upper and lower

bounds, which corrected an error in my original draft solution to this problem.

B.2.3

An odd problem

Suppose that each of n processes in a message-passing system with a complete network is attached to a sensor. Each sensor has two states, active
and inactive; initially, all sensors are off. When the sensor changes state,
the corresponding process is notified immediately, and can update its state
and send messages to other processes in response to this event. It is also
guaranteed that if a sensor changes state, it does not change state again for
at least two time units. We would like to detect when an odd number of
sensors are active, by having at least one process update its state to set off
an alarm at a time when this condition holds.
A correct protocol for this problem should satisfy two conditions:
No false positives If a process sets of an alarm, then an odd number of
sensors are active.
Termination If at some time an odd number of sensors are active, and from
that point on no sensor changes its state, then some process eventually
sets off an alarm.
For what values of n is it possible to construct such a protocol?
Solution
It is feasible to solve the problem for n < 3.
For n = 1, the unique process sets off its alarm as soon as its sensor
becomes active.
For n = 2, have each process send a message to the other containing
its sensor state whenever the sensor state changes. Let s1 and s2 be the
state of the two processs sensors, with 0 representing inactive and 1 active,
and let pi set off its alarm if it receives a message s such that s si = 1.
This satisfies termination, because if we reach a configuration with an odd
number of active sensors, the last sensor to change causes a message to be
sent to the other process that will cause it to set off its alarm. It satisfies
no-false-positives, because if pi sets off its alarm, then si = s because at
most one time unit has elapsed since pi sent s; it follows that si si = 1
and an odd number of sensors are active.

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No such protocol is possible for n 3. Make p1 s sensor active. Run the

protocol until some process pi is about to enter an alarm state (this occurs
eventually because otherwise we violate termination). Let pj be one of p2 or
p3 with j 6= i, activate pj s sensor (we can do this without violating the onceper-time-unit restriction because it has never previously been activated) and
then let pi set off its alarm. We have now violated no-false-positives.

B.3
B.3.1

Assignment 3: due Friday, 2011-12-02, at 17:00

A restricted queue

Suppose you have an atomic queue Q that supports operations enq and deq,
restricted so that:
enq(Q) always pushes the identity of the current process onto the tail
of the queue.
deq(Q) tests if the queue is nonempty and its head is equal to the
identity of the current process. If so, it pops the head and returns
true. If not, it does nothing and returns false.
The rationale for these restrictions is that this is the minimal version of
a queue needed to implement a starvation-free mutex using Algorithm 17.2.
What is the consensus number of this object?
Solution
The restricted queue has consensus number 1.
Suppose we have 2 processes, and consider all pairs of operations on Q
that might get us out of a bivalent configuration C. Let x be an operation
carried out by p that leads to a b-valent state, and y an operation by q that
leads to a (b)-valent state. There are three cases:
Two deq operations. If Q is empty, the operations commute. If the
head of the Q is p, then y is a no-op and p cant distinguish between
Cx and Cyx. Similarly for q if the head is q.
One enq and one deq operation. Suppose x is an enq and y a deq. If
Q is empty or the head is not q, then y is a no-op: p cant distinguish
Cx from Cyx. If the head is q, then x and y commute. The same
holds in reverse if x is a deq and y an enq.

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Two enq operations. This is a little tricky, because Cxy and Cyx
are different states. However, if Q is nonempty in C, whichever process isnt at the head of Q cant distinguish them, because any deq
operation returns false and never reaches the newly-enqueued values.
This leaves the case where Q is empty in C. Run p until it is poised
to do x0 = deq(Q) (if this never happens, p cant distinguish Cxy
from Cyx); then run q until it is poised to do y 0 = deq(Q) as well
(same argument as for p). Now allow both deq operations to proceed
in whichever order causes them both to succeed. Since the processes
cant tell which deq happened first, they cant tell which enq happened first either. Slightly more formally, if we let be the sequence
of operations leading up to the two deq operations, weve just shown
Cxyx0 y 0 is indistinguishable from Cyxy 0 x0 to both processes.
In all cases, we find that we cant escape bivalence. It follows that Q cant
solve 2-process consensus.

B.3.2

Writable fetch-and-increment

Suppose you are given an unlimited supply of atomic registers and fetchand-increment objects, where the fetch-and-increment objects are all initialized to 0 and supply only a fetch-and-increment operation that increments
the object and returns the old value. Show how to use these objects to
construct a wait-free, linearizable implementation of an augmented fetchand-increment that also supports a write operation that sets the value of
the fetch-and-increment and returns nothing.
Solution
Well use a snapshot object a to control access to an infinite array f of fetchand-increments, where each time somebody writes to the implemented object, we switch to a new fetch-and-increment. Each cell in a holds (timestamp, base),
where base is the starting value of the simulated fetch-and-increment. Well
also use an extra fetch-and-increment T to hand out timestamps.
Code is in Algorithm B.1.
Since this is all straight-line code, its trivially wait-free.
Proof of linearizability is by grouping all operations by timestamp, using s[i].timestamp for FetchAndIncrement operations and t for write operations, then putting write before FetchAndIncrement, then ordering FetchAndIncrement
by return value. Each group will consist of a write(v) for some v followed by
zero or more FetchAndIncrement operations, which will return increasing

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2
3
4

5
6
7

308

procedure FetchAndIncrement()
s snapshot(a)
i argmaxi (s[i].timestamp)
return f [s[i].timestamp] + s[i].base
procedure write(v)
t FetchAndIncrement(T )
a[myId] (t, v)
Algorithm B.1: Resettable fetch-and-increment

values starting at v since they are just returning values from the underlying
FetchAndIncrement object; the implementation thus meets the specification.
To show consistency with the actual execution order, observe that timestamps only increase over time and that the use of snapshot means that
any process that observes or writes a timestamp t does so at a time later
than any process that observes or writes any t0 < t; this shows the group
order is consistent. Within each group, the write writes a[myId] before
any FetchAndIncrement reads it, so again we have consistency between the
write and any FetchAndIncrement operations. The FetchAndIncrement
operations are linearized in the order in which they access the underlying
f [. . . ] object, so we win here too.

B.3.3

A box object

Suppose you want to implement an object representing a w h box whose

width (w) and height (h) can be increased if needed. Initially, the box is
1 1, and the coordinates can be increased by 1 each using IncWidth and
IncHeight operations. There is also a GetArea operation that returns the
area w h of the box.
Give an obstruction-free deterministic implementation of this object from
atomic registers that optimizes the worst-case individual step complexity of
GetArea, and show that your implementation is optimal by this measure up
to constant factors.
Solution
Let b be the box object. Represent b by a snapshot object a, where a[i]
holds a pair (wi , hi ) representing the number of times process i has

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309

executed IncWidth and IncHeight; these operations simply increment the

appropriate value and update the snapshot object. Let GetArea take a
P
P
snapshot and return ( i wi ) ( i hi ); the cost of the snapshot is O(n).
To see that this is optimal, observe that we can use IncWidth and
GetArea to represent inc and read for a standard counter. The JayantiTan-Toueg bound applies to counters, giving a worst-case cost of (n) for
GetArea.

B.4

CS465/CS565 Final Exam, December 12th,

2011

Write your answers in the blue book(s). Justify your answers. Work alone.
Do not use any notes or books.
There are four problems on this exam, each worth 20 points, for a total
of 80 points. You have approximately three hours to complete this exam.
General clarifications added during exam Assume all processes have
unique ids and know n. Assume that the network is complete in the messagepassing model.

B.4.1

Lockable registers (20 points)

Most memory-management units provide the ability to control access to

specific memory pages, allowing a page to be marked (for example) readonly. Suppose that we model this by a lockable register that has the usual
register operations read(r) and write(r, v) plus an additional operation
lock(r). The behavior of the register is just like a normal atomic register
until somebody calls lock(r); after this, any call to write(r) has no effect.
What is the consensus number of this object?
Solution
The consensus number is ; a single lockable register solves consensus for
any number of processes. Code is in Algorithm B.2.
1
2
3

write(r, input)
lock(r)
return read(r)
Algorithm B.2: Consensus using a lockable register

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310

Termination and validity are trivial. Agreement follows from the fact
that whatever value is in r when lock(r) is first called will never change,
and thus will be read and returned by all processes.

B.4.2

Byzantine timestamps (20 points)

Suppose you have an asynchronous message passing system with exactly one
Byzantine process.
You would like the non-faulty processes to be able to acquire an increasing sequence of timestamps. A process should be able to execute the timestamp protocol as often as it likes, and it should be guaranteed that when a
process is non-faulty, it eventually obtains a timestamp that is larger than
any timestamp returned in any execution of the protocol by a non-faulty
process that finishes before the current processs execution started.
Note that there is no bound on the size of a timestamp, so having the
Byzantine process run up the timestamp values is not a problem, as long as
it cant cause the timestamps to go down.
For what values of n is it possible to solve this problem?
Solution
It is possible to solve the problem for all n except n = 3. For n = 1, there are
no non-faulty processes, so the specification is satisfied trivially. For n = 2,
there is only one non-faulty process: it can just keep its own counter and
return an increasing sequence of timestamps without talking to the other
process at all.
For n = 3, it is not possible. Consider an execution in which messages
between non-faulty processes p and q are delayed indefinitely. If the Byzantine process r acts to each of p and q as it would if the other had crashed,
this execution is indistinguishable to p and q from an execution in which r
is correct and the other is faulty. Since there is no communication between
p and q, it is easy to construct and execution in which the specification is
violated.
For n 4, the protocol given in Algorithm B.3 works.
The idea is similar to the Attiya, Bar-Noy, Dolev distributed shared
memory algorithm [ABND95]. A process that needs a timestamp polls n 1
other processes for the maximum values theyve seen and adds 1 to it; before
returning, it sends the new timestamp to all other processes and waits to
receive n 1 acknowledgments. The Byzantine process may choose not to
answer, but this is not enough to block completion of the protocol.

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2
3
4
5
6
7
8

9
10

11
12
13

311

procedure getTimestamp()
ci ci + 1
send probe(ci ) to all processes
wait to receive response(ci , vj ) from n 1 processes
vi (maxj vj ) + 1
send newTimestamp(ci , vi ) to all processes
wait to receive ack(ci ) from n 1 processes
return vi
upon receiving probe(cj ) from j do
send response(cj , vi ) to j
upon receiving newTimestamp(cj , vj ) from j do
vi max(vi , vj )
send ack(cj ) to j

Algorithm B.3: Timestamps with n 3 and one Byzantine process

To show the timestamps are increasing, observe that after the completion
of any call by i to getTimestamp, at least n 2 non-faulty processes j have
a value vj vi . Any call to getTimestamp that starts later sees at least
n 3 > 0 of these values, and so computes a max that is at least as big as
vi and then adds 1 to it, giving a larger value.

B.4.3

Failure detectors and k-set agreement (20 points)

Recall that in the k-set agreement problem we want each of n processes

to choose a decision value, with the property that the set of decision values
has at most k distinct elements. It is known that k-set agreement cannot
be solved deterministically in an asynchronous message-passing or sharedmemory system with k or more crash failures.
Suppose that you are working in an asynchronous message-passing system with an eventually strong (S) failure detector. Is it possible to solve
k-set agreement deterministically with f crash failures, when k f < n/2?
Solution
Yes. With f < n/2 and S, we can solve consensus using ChandraToueg [CT96]. Since this gives a unique decision value, it solves k-set agree-

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312

ment for any k 1.

B.4.4

A set data structure (20 points)

Consider a data structure that represents a set S, with an operation add(S, x)

that adds x to S by setting S S {x}), and an operation size(S) that
returns the number of distinct4 elements |S| of S. There are no restrictions
on the types or sizes of elements that can be added to the set.
Show that any deterministic wait-free implementation of this object from
atomic registers has individual step complexity (n) for some operation in
the worst case.
Solution
Algorithm B.4 implements a counter from a set object, where the counter
read consists of a single call to size(S). The idea is that each increment
is implemented by inserting a new element into S, so |S| is always equal to
the number of increments.
procedure inc(S)
nonce nonce + 1
add(S, hmyId, noncei).

1
2
3

procedure read(S)
return size(S)

4
5

Algorithm B.4: Counter from set object

Since the Jayanti-Tan-Toueg lower bound [JTT00] gives a lower bound
of (n) on the worst-case cost of a counter read, there exists an execution
in which size(S) takes (n) steps.
(We could also apply JTT directly by showing that the set object is
perturbable; this follows because adding an element not added by anybody
else is always visible to the reader.)

Clarification added during exam.

Appendix C

Additional sample final

exams
This appendix contains final exams from previous times the course was offered, and is intended to give a rough guide to the typical format and content
of a final exam. Note that the topics covered in past years were not necessarily the same as those covered this year.

C.1

CS425/CS525 Final Exam, December 15th,

2005

Write your answers in the blue book(s). Justify your answers. Work alone.
Do not use any notes or books.
There are three problems on this exam, each worth 20 points, for a total
of 60 points. You have approximately three hours to complete this exam.

C.1.1

Consensus by attrition (20 points)

Suppose you are given a bounded fetch-and-subtract register that holds

a non-negative integer value and supports an operation fetch-and-subtract(k)
for each k > 0 that (a) sets the value of the register to the previous value
minus k, or zero if this result would be negative, and (b) returns the previous
value of the register.
Determine the consensus number of bounded fetch-and-subtract under
the assumptions that you can use arbitrarily many such objects, that you can
supplement them with arbitrarily many multiwriter/multireader read/write
registers, that you can initialize all registers of both types to initial values
313

APPENDIX C. ADDITIONAL SAMPLE FINAL EXAMS

314

of your choosing, and that the design of the consensus protocol can depend
on the number of processes N .
Solution
The consensus number is 2.
To implement 2-process wait-free consensus, use a single fetch-and-subtract
register initialized to 1 plus two auxiliary read/write registers to hold the
input values of the processes. Each process writes its input to its own register, then performs a fetch-and-subtract(1) on the fetch-and-subtract register.
Whichever process gets 1 from the fetch-and-subtract returns its own input;
the other process (which gets 0) returns the winning processs input (which
it can read from the winning processs read/write register.)
To show that the consensus number is at most 2, observe that any
two fetch-and-subtract operations commute: starting from state x, after
fetch-and-subtract(k1 ) and fetch-and-subtract(k2 ) the value in the fetchand-subtract register is max(0, x k1 k2 ) regardless of the order of the
operations.

C.1.2

Long-distance agreement (20 points)

Consider an asynchronous message-passing model consisting of N processes

p1 . . . pN arranged in a line, so that each process i can send messages only
to processes i 1 and i + 1 (if they exist). Assume that there are no failures,
that local computation takes zero time, and that every message is delivered
at most 1 time unit after it is sent no matter how many messages are sent
on the same edge.
Now suppose that we wish to solve agreement in this model, where the
agreement protocol is triggered by a local input event at one or more processes and it terminates when every process executes a local decide event.
As with all agreement problems, we want Agreement (all processes decide
the same value), Termination (all processes eventually decide), and Validity
(the common decision value previously appeared in some input). We also
want no false starts: the first action of any process should either be an input
action or the receipt of a message.
Define the time cost of a protocol for this problem as the worst-case
time between the first input event and the last decide event. Give the best
upper and lower bounds you can on this time as function of N . Your upper
and lower bounds should be exact: using no asymptotic notation or hidden
constant factors. Ideally, they should also be equal.

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315

Solution
Upper bound
Because there are no failures, we can appoint a leader and have it decide.
The natural choice is some process near the middle, say pb(N +1)/2c . Upon
receiving an input, either directly through an input event or indirectly from
another process, the process sends the input value along the line toward the
leader. The leader takes the first input it receives and broadcasts it back
out in both directions as the decision value. The worst case is when the
protocol is initiated at pN ; then we pay 2(N b(N + 1)/2c) time to send all
messages out and back, which is N time units when N is even and N 1
time units when N is odd.
Lower bound
Proving an almost-matching lower bound of N 1 time units is trivial: if
p1 is the only initiator and it starts at time t0 , then by an easy induction
argument,in the worst case pi doesnt learn of any input until time t0 +(i1),
and in particular pN doesnt find out until after N 1 time units. If pN
nonetheless decides early, its decision value will violate validity in some
executions.
But we can actually prove something stronger than this: that N time
units are indeed required when N is odd. Consider two slow executions 0
and 1 , where (a) all messages are delivered after exactly one time unit in
each execution; (b) in 0 only p1 receives an input and the input is 0; and
(c) in 1 only pN receives an input and the input is 1. For each of the
executions, construct a causal ordering on events in the usual fashion: a
send is ordered before a receive, two events of the same process are ordered
by time, and other events are partially ordered by the transitive closure of
this relation.
Now consider for 0 the set of all events that precede the decide(0)
event of p1 and for 1 the set of all events that precede the decide(1) event
of pN . Consider further the sets of processes S0 and S1 at which these events
occur; if these two sets of processes do not overlap, then we can construct
an execution in which both sets of events occur, violating Agreement.
Because S0 and S1 overlap, we must have |S0 | + |S1 | N + 1, and so at
least one of the two sets has size at least d(N + 1)/2e, which is N/2 + 1 when
N is even. Suppose that it is S0 . Then in order for any event to occur at
pN/2+1 at all some sequence of messages must travel from the initial input
to p1 to process pN/2+1 (taking N/2 time units), and the causal ordering

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316

implies that an additional sequence of messages travels back from pN/2+1 to

p1 before p1 decides (taking and additional N/2 time units). The total time
is thus N .

C.1.3

Mutex appendages (20 points)

An append register supports standard read operations plus an append operation that appends its argument to the list of values already in the register.
An append-and-fetch register is similar to an append register, except that
it returns the value in the register after performing the append operation.
Suppose that you have an failure-free asynchronous system with anonymous
deterministic processes (i.e., deterministic processes that all run exactly the
same code). Prove or disprove each of the following statements:
1. It is possible to solve mutual exclusion using only append registers.
2. It is possible to solve mutual exclusion using only append-and-fetch
registers.
In either case, the solution should work for arbitrarily many processes
solving mutual exclusion when N = 1 is not interesting. You are also not
required in either case to guarantee lockout-freedom.
Clarification given during exam
1. If it helps, you may assume that the processes know N . (It probably
doesnt help.)
Solution
1. Disproof: With append registers only, it is not possible to solve mutual
exclusion. To prove this, construct a failure-free execution in which
the processes never break symmetry. In the initial configuration, all
processes have the same state and thus execute either the same read
operation or the same append operation; in either case we let all N
operations occur in some arbitrary order. If the operations are all
reads, all processes read the same value and move to the same new
state. If the operations are all appends, then no values are returned
and again all processes enter the same new state. (Its also the case
that the processes cant tell from the registers state which of the
identical append operations went first, but we dont actually need to
use this fact.)

APPENDIX C. ADDITIONAL SAMPLE FINAL EXAMS

317

Since we get a fair failure-free execution where all processes move

through the same sequence of states, if any process decides its in its
critical section, all do. We thus cant solve mutual exclusion in this
model.
2. Since the processes are anonymous, any solution that depends on them
having identifiers isnt going to work. But there is a simple solution
that requires only appending single bits to the register.
Each process trying to enter a critical section repeatedly executes an
append-and-fetch operation with argument 0; if the append-and-fetch
operation returns either a list consisting only of a single 0 or a list
whose second-to-last element is 1, the process enters its critical section.
To leave the critical section, the process does append-and-fetch(1).

C.2

CS425/CS525 Final Exam, May 8th, 2008

C.2.1

Message passing without failures (20 points)

Suppose you have an asynchronous message-passing system with a complete communication graph, unique node identities, and no failures. Show
that any deterministic atomic shared-memory object can be simulated in
this model, or give an example of a shared-memory object that cant be
simulated.
Solution
Pick some leader node to implement the object. To execute an operation,
send the operation to the leader node, then have the leader carry out the
operation (sequentially) on its copy of the object and send the results back.

C.2.2

A ring buffer (20 points)

Suppose you are given a ring buffer object that consists of k 1 memory
locations a[0] . . . a[k 1] with an atomic shift-and-fetch operation that takes
an argument v and (a) shifts v into the buffer, so that a[i] a[i + 1] for

APPENDIX C. ADDITIONAL SAMPLE FINAL EXAMS

318

each i less than k 1 and a[k 1] v; and (b) returns a snapshot of the
new contents of the array (after the shift).
What is the consensus number of this object as a function of k?
Solution
We can clearly solve consensus for at least k processes: each process calls
shift-and-fetch on its input, and returns the first non-null value in the buffer.
So now we want to show that we cant solve consensus for k+1 processes.
Apply the usual FLP-style argument to get to a bivalent configuration C
where each of the k + 1 processes has a pending operation that leads to
a univalent configuration. Let e0 and e1 be particular operations leading
to 0-valent and 1-valent configurations, respectively, and let e2 . . . ek be the
remaining k 1 pending operations.
We need to argue first that no two distinct operations ei and ej are
operations of different objects. Suppose that Cei is 0-valent and Cej is
1-valent; then if ei and ej are on different objects, Cei ej (still 0-valent) is
indistinguishable by all processes from Cej ei (still 1-valent), a contradiction.
Alternatively, if ei and ej are both b-valent, there exists some (1b)-valent ek
such that ei and ej both operate on the same object as ek , by the preceding
argument. So all of e0 . . . ek are operations on the same object.
By the usual argument we know that this object cant be a register. Lets
show it cant be a ring buffer either. Consider the configurations Ce0 e1 . . . ek
and Ce1 . . . ek . These are indistinguishable to the process carrying out ek
(because its sees only the inputs to e1 through ek in its snapshot). So they
must have the same valence, a contradiction.
It follows that the consensus number of a k-element ring buffer is exactly
k.

C.2.3

Leader election on a torus (20 points)

An n n torus is a graph consisting of n2 nodes, where each node (i, j),

0 i, j n 1, is connected to nodes (i 1, j), (i + 1, j), (i, j 1), and
(i, j + 1), where all computation is done mod n.
Suppose you have an asynchronous message-passing system with a communication graph in the form of an n n torus. Suppose further that each
node has a unique identifier (some large natural number) but doesnt know
the value of n. Give an algorithm for leader election in this model with the
best message complexity you can come up with.

APPENDIX C. ADDITIONAL SAMPLE FINAL EXAMS

319

Solution
First observe that each row and column of the torus is a bidirectional ring,
so we can run e.g. Hirschbirg and Sinclairs O(n log n)-message protocol
within each of these rings to find the smallest identifier in the ring. Well
use this to construct the following algorithm:
1. Run Hirschbirg-Sinclair in each row to get a local leader for each row;
this takes n O(n log n) = O(n2 log n) messages. Use an additional n
messages per row to distribute the identifier for the row leader to all
nodes and initiate the next stage of the protocol.
2. Run Hirschbirg-Sinclair in each column with each node adopting the
row leader identifier as its own. This costs another O(n2 log n) messages; at the end, every node knows the minimum identifier of all nodes
in the torus.
The total message complexity is O(n2 log n). (I suspect this is optimal,
but I dont have a proof.)

C.2.4

An overlay network (20 points)

A collection of n nodesin an asynchronous message-passing system with a

connected, bidirectional communications graph with O(1) links per node
wish to engage in some strictly legitimate file-sharing. Each node starts
with some input pair (k, v), where k is a key and v is a value, and the search
problem is to find the value v corresponding to a particular key k.
1. Suppose that we cant do any preparation ahead of time. Give an
algorithm for searching with the smallest asymptotic worst-case message complexity you can find as a function of n. You may assume that
there are no limits on time complexity, message size, or storage space
at each node.
2. Suppose now that some designated leader node can initiate a protocol
ahead of time to pre-process the data in the nodes before any query is
initiated. Give a pre-processing algorithm (that does not depend on
which key is eventually searched for) and associated search algorithm
such that the search algorithm minimizes the asymptotic worst-case
message complexity. Here you may assume that there are no limits on
time complexity, message size, or storage space for either algorithm,
and that you dont care about the message complexity of the preprocessing algorithm.

APPENDIX C. ADDITIONAL SAMPLE FINAL EXAMS

320

3. Give the best lower bound you can on the total message complexity of
the pre-processing and search algorithms in the case above.
Solution
1. Run depth-first search to find the matching key and return the corresponding value back up the tree. Message complexity is O(|E|) = O(n)
(since each node has only O(1) links).
2. Basic idea: give each node a copy of all key-value pairs, then searches
take zero messages. To give each node a copy of all key-value pairs we
could do convergecast followed by broadcast (O(n) message complexity) or just flood each pair O(n2 ). Either is fine since we dont care
about the message complexity of the pre-processing stage.
3. Suppose the total message complexity of both the pre-processing stage
and the search protocol is less than n 1. Then there is some node
other than the initiator of the search that sends no messages at any
time during the protocol. If this is the node with the matching keyvalue pair, we dont find it. It follows that any solution to the search
problem. requires a total of (n) messages in the pre-processing and
search protocols.

C.3

CS425/CS525 Final Exam, May 10th, 2010

C.3.1

Anti-consensus (20 points)

A wait-free anti-consensus protocol satisfies the conditions:

Wait-free termination Every process decides in a bounded number of its
own steps.
Non-triviality There is at least one process that decides different values
in different executions.
Disagreement If at least two processes decide, then some processes decide
on different values.

APPENDIX C. ADDITIONAL SAMPLE FINAL EXAMS

321

Show that there is no deterministic wait-free anti-consensus protocol

using only atomic registers for two processes and two possible output values,
but there is one for three processes and three possible output values.
Clarification:

You should assume processes have distinct identities.

Solution
No protocol for two: turn an anti-consensus protocol with outputs in {0, 1}
into a consensus protocol by having one of the processes always negate its
output.
A protocol for three: Use a splitter.

C.3.2

Odd or even (20 points)

Suppose you have a protocol for a synchronous message-passing ring that is

anonymous (all processes run the same code) and uniform (this code is the
same for rings of different sizes). Suppose also that the processes are given
inputs marking some, but not all, of them as leaders. Give an algorithm
for determining if the size of the ring is odd or even, or show that no such
algorithm is possible.
Clarification:
algorithm.

Assume a bidirectional, oriented ring and a deterministic

Solution
Here is an impossibility proof. Suppose there is such an algorithm, and let
it correctly decide odd on a ring of size 2k + 1 for some k and some set
of leader inputs. Now construct a ring of size 4k + 2 by pasting two such
rings together (assigning the same values to the leader bits in each copy)
and run the algorithm on this ring. By the usual symmetry argument,
every corresponding process sends the same messages and makes the same
decisions in both rings, implying that the processes incorrectly decide the
ring of size 4k + 2 is odd.

C.3.3

Atomic snapshot arrays using message-passing (20 points)

Consider the following variant of Attiya-Bar-Noy-Dolev for obtaining snapshots of an array instead of individual register values, in an asynchronous
message-passing system with t < n/4 crash failures. The data structure we

APPENDIX C. ADDITIONAL SAMPLE FINAL EXAMS

322

are simulating is an array a consisting of an atomic register a[i] for each

process i, with the ability to perform atomic snapshots.
Values are written by sending a set of hi, v, ti i values to all processes,
where i specifies the segment a[i] of the array to write, v gives a value for
this segment, and ti is an increasing timestamp used to indicate more recent
values. We use a set of values because (as in ABD) some values may be
obtained indirectly.
To update segment a[i] with value v, process i generates a new timestamp
ti , sends {hi, v, ti i} to all processes, and waits for acknowledgments from at
least 3n/4 processes.
Upon receiving a message containing one or more hi, v, ti i triples, a process updates its copy of a[i] for any i with a higher timestamp than previously
seen, and responds with an acknowledgment (well assume use of nonces so
that its unambiguous which message is being acknowledged).
To perform a snapshot, a process sends snapshot to all processes, and
waits to receive responses from at least 3n/4 processes, which will consist of
the most recent values of each a[i] known by each of these processes together
with their timestamps (its a set of triples as above). The snapshot process
then takes the most recent versions of a[i] for each of these responses and
updates its own copy, then sends its entire snapshot vector to all processes
and waits to receive at least 3n/4 acknowledgments. When it has received
these acknowledgments, it returns its own copy of a[i] for all i.
Prove or disprove: The above procedure implements an atomic snapshot array in an asynchronous message-passing system with t < n/4 crash
failures.
Solution
Disproof: Let s1 and s2 be processes carrying out snapshots and let w1
and w2 be processes carrying out writes. Suppose that each wi initiates a
write of 1 to a[wi ], but all of its messages to other processes are delayed
after it updates its own copy awi [wi ]. Now let each si receive responses
from 3n/4 1 processes not otherwise mentioned plus wi . Then s1 will
return a vector with a[w1 ] = 1 and a[w2 ] = 0 while s2 will return a vector
with a[w1 ] = 0 and a[w2 ] = 1, which is inconsistent. The fact that these
vectors are also disseminated throughout at least 3n/4 other processes is a
red herring.

APPENDIX C. ADDITIONAL SAMPLE FINAL EXAMS

C.3.4

323

Priority queues (20 points)

Let Q be a priority queue whose states are multisets of natural numbers and
that has operations enq(v) and deq(), where enq(p) adds a new value v to
the queue, and deq() removes and returns the smallest value in the queue,
or returns null if the queue is empty. (If there is more than one copy of the
smallest value, only one copy is removed.)
What is the consensus number of this object?
Solution
The consensus number is 2. The proof is similar to that for a queue.
To show we can do consensus for n = 2, start with a priority queue with
a single value in it, and have each process attempt to dequeue this value. If
a process gets the value, it decides on its own input; if it gets null, it decides
on the other processs input.
To show we cant do consensus for n = 3, observe first that starting from
any states C of the queue, given any two operations x and y that are both
enqueues or both dequeues, the states Cxy and Cyx are identical. This
means that a third process cant tell which operation went first, meaning
that a pair of enqueues or a pair of dequeues cant get us out of a bivalent
configuration in the FLP argument. We can also exclude any split involving
two operations on different queues (or other objects) But we still need to
consider the case of a dequeue operation d and an enqueue operation e on
the same queue Q. This splits into several subcases, depending on the state
C of the queue in some bivalent configuration:
1. C = {}. Then Ced = Cd = {}, and a third process cant tell which of
d or e went first.
2. C is nonempty and e = enq(v), where v is greater than or equal to the
smallest value in C. Then Cde and Ced are identical, and no third
process can tell which of d or e went first.
3. C is nonempty and e = enq(v), where v is less than any value in C.
Consider the configurations Ced and Cde. Here the process pd that
performs d can tell which operation went first, because it either obtains
v or some other value v 0 6= v. Kill this process. No other process in Ced
or Cde can distinguish the two states without dequeuing whichever of
v or v 0 was not dequeued by pd . So consider two parallel executions
Ced and Cde where consists of an arbitrary sequence of operations
ending with a deq on Q by some process p (if no process ever attempts

APPENDIX C. ADDITIONAL SAMPLE FINAL EXAMS

324

to dequeue from Q, then we have already won, since the survivors cant
distinguish Ced from Cde). Now the state of all objects is the same
after Ced and Cde, and only pd and p have different states in these
two configurations. So any third process is out of luck.

Appendix D

I/O automata
D.1

Low-level view: I/O automata

An I/O automaton A is an automaton where transitions are labeled by

actions, which come in three classes: input actions, triggered by the
outside world; output actions triggered by the automaton and visible to
the outside world; and internal actions, triggered by the automaton but
not visible to the outside world. These classes correspond to inputs, outputs,
and internal computation steps of the automaton; the latter are provided
mostly to give merged input/output actions a place to go when automata are
composed together. A transition relation trans(A) relates states(A)
acts(A) states(A); if (s, a, s0 ) is in trans(A), it means that A can move
from state s to state s0 by executing action a.
There is also an equivalence relation task(A) on the output and internal
actions, which is used for enforcing fairness conditionsthe basic idea is that
in a fair execution some action in each equivalence class must be executed
eventually (a more accurate definition will be given below).
The I/O automaton model carries with it a lot of specialized jargon.
Well try to avoid it as much as possible. One thing that will be difficult to
avoid in reading [Lyn96] is the notion of a signature, which is just the tuple
sig(A) = (in(A), out(A), int(A)) describing the actions of an automaton
A.

D.1.1

Enabled actions

An action a is enabled in some state s if trans(A) contains at least one

transition (s, a, s0 ). Input actions are always enabledthis is a requirement of the model. Output and internal actionsthe locally controlled
325

APPENDIX D. I/O AUTOMATA

326

actionsare not subject to this restriction. A state s is quiescent if only

input actions are enabled in s.

D.1.2

Executions, fairness, and traces

An execution of A is a sequence s0 a0 s1 a1 . . . where each triple (si , ai si+1 )

is in trans(A). Executions may be finite or infinite; if finite, they must end
in a state.
A trace of A is a subsequence of some execution consisting precisely
of the external (i.e., input and output) actions, with states and internal
actions omitted. If we dont want to get into the guts of a particular I/O
automatonand we usually dont, unless we cant help it because we have to
think explicitly about states for some reasonwe can describe its externallyvisible behavior by just giving its set of traces.

D.1.3

Composition of automata

Composing a set of I/O automata yields a new super-automaton whose state

set is the Cartesian product of the state sets of its components and whose
action set is the union of the action sets of its components. A transition
with a given action a updates the states of all components that have a as an
action and has no effect on the states of other components. The classification
of actions into the three classes is used to enforce some simple compatibility
rules on the component automata; in particular:
1. An internal action of a component is never an action of another component
internal actions are completely invisible.
2. No output action of a component can be an output action of another
component.
3. No action is shared by infinitely many components.1 In practice this
means that no action can be an input action of infinitely many components, since the preceding rules mean that any action is an output
or internal action of at most one component.
All output actions of the components are also output actions of the
composition. An input action of a component is an input of the composition
only if some other component doesnt supply it as an output; in this case
1

Note that infinite (but countable) compositions are permitted.

APPENDIX D. I/O AUTOMATA

327

it becomes an output action of the composition. Internal actions remain

internal (and largely useless, except for bookkeeping purposes).
The task equivalence relation is the union of the task relations for the
components: this turns out to give a genuine equivalence relation on output
and internal actions precisely because the first two compatibility rules hold.
Given an execution or trace X of a composite automaton that includes
A, we can construct the corresponding execution or trace X|A of A which
just includes the states of A and the actions visible to A (events that dont
change the state of A drop out). The definition of composition is chosen so
that X|A is in fact an execution/trace of A whenever X is.

D.1.4

Hiding actions

Composing A and B continues to expose the outputs of A even if they line

up with inputs of B. While this may sometimes be desirable, often we want
to shove such internal communication under the rug. The model lets us do
this by redefining the signature of an automaton to make some or all of the
output actions into internal actions.

D.1.5

Fairness

I/O automata come with a built-in definition of fair executions, where an

execution of A is fair if, for each equivalence class C of actions in task(A),
1. the execution is finite and no action in C is enabled in the final state,
or
2. the execution is infinite and there are infinitely many occurrences of
actions in C, or
3. the execution is infinite and there are infinitely many states in which
no action in C is enabled.
If we think of C as corresponding to some thread or process, this says
that C gets infinitely many chances to do something in an infinite execution,
but may not actually do them if it gives ups and stops waiting (the third
case). The finite case essentially says that a finite execution isnt fair unless
nobody is waiting at the end. The motivation for this particular definition
is that it guarantees (a) that any finite execution can be extended to a fair
execution and (b) that the restriction X|A of a fair execution or trace X is
also fair.

APPENDIX D. I/O AUTOMATA

328

Fairness is useful e.g. for guaranteeing message delivery in a messagepassing system: make each message-delivery action its own task class and
each message will eventually be delivered; similarly make each messagesending action its own task class and a process will eventually send every
message it intends to send. Tweaking the task classes can allow for possibilities of starvation, e.g. if all message-delivery actions are equivalent then
a spammer can shut down the system in a fair execution where only his
(infinitely many) messages are delivered.

D.1.6

Specifying an automaton

The typical approach is to write down preconditions and effects for each
action (for input actions, the preconditions are empty). An example would
be the spambot in Algorithm D.1.
1
2
3
4
5
6

input action setMessage(m)

effects
state m
output action spam(m)
precondition
spam = m

7
8

effects
none (keep spamming)
Algorithm D.1: Spambot as an I/O automaton

(Plus an initial state, e.g. state = , where is not a possible message,

and a task partition, of which we will speak more below when we talk about
liveness properties.)

D.2

High-level view: traces

When studying the behavior of a system, traces are what we really care
about, and we want to avoid talking about states as much as possible. So
what well aim to do is to get rid of the states early by computing the set of
traces (or fair traces) of each automaton in our system, then compose traces
to get traces for the system as a whole. Our typical goal will be to show
that the resulting set of traces has some desirable properties, usually of the
form (1) nothing bad happens (a safety property); (2) something good

APPENDIX D. I/O AUTOMATA

329

eventually happens (a liveness property); or (3) the horribly complex

composite automaton representing this concrete system acts just like that
nice clean automaton representing a specification (a simulation).
Very formally, a trace property specifies both the signature of the
automaton and a set of traces, such that all traces (or perhaps fair traces)
of the automata appear in the set. Well usually forget about the first part.
Tricky detail: Its OK if not all traces in P are generated by A (we want
trace(A) P , but not necessarily trace(A) = P ). But trace(A) will be
pretty big (it includes, for example, all finite sequences of input actions)
so hopefully the fact that A has to do something with inputs will tell us
something useful.

D.2.1

Example

A property we might demand of the spambot above (or some other abstraction of a message channel) is that it only delivers messages that have
previously been given to it. As a trace property this says that in any trace
t, if tk = spam(m), then tj = setMessage(m) for some j < k. (As a set, this
is just the set of all sequences of external spambot-actions that have this
property.) Call this property P .
To prove that the spambot automaton given above satisfies P , we might
argue that for any execution s0 a0 s1 a1 . . . , that si = m in the last setMessage
action preceding si , or if there is no such action. This is easily proved
by induction on i. It then follows that since spam(m) can only transmit the
current state, that if spam(m) follows si = m that it follows some earlier
setMessage(m) as claimed.
However, there are traces that satisfy P that dont correspond to executions of the spambot; for example, consider the trace setMessage(0)setMessage(1)spam(0).
This satisfies P (0 was previously given to the automaton spam(0)), but the
automaton wont generate it because the 0 was overwritten by the later
setMessage(1) action. Whether this is indicates a problem with our automaton not being nondeterministic enough or our trace property being too weak
is a question about what we really want the automaton to do.

D.2.2
D.2.2.1

Types of trace properties

Safety properties

P is a safety property if
1. P is nonempty.

APPENDIX D. I/O AUTOMATA

330

2. P is prefix-closed, i.e. if xy is in P then x is in P .

3. P is limit-closed, i.e. if x1 , x1 x2 , x1 x2 x3 , . . . are all in P , then so is
the infinite sequence obtained by taking their limit.
Because of the last restrictions, its enough to prove that P holds for all
finite traces of A to show that it holds for all traces (and thus for all fair
traces), since any trace is a limit of finite traces. Conversely, if there is some
trace or fair trace for which P fails, the second restriction says that P fails
on any finite prefix of P , so again looking at only finite prefixes is enough.
The spambot property mentioned above is a safety property.
Safety properties are typically proved using invariants, properties that
are shown by induction to hold in all reachable states.
D.2.2.2

Liveness properties

P is a liveness property of A if any finite sequence of actions in acts(A)

has an extension in P . Note that liveness properties will in general include
many sequences of actions that arent traces of A, since they are extensions
of finite sequences that A cant do (e.g. starting the execution with an
action not enabled in the initial state). If you want to restrict yourself only
to proper executions of A, use a safety property. (Its worth noting that the
same property P cant do both: any P that is both a liveness and a safety
property includes all sequences of actions because of the closure rules.)
Liveness properties are those that are always eventually satisfiable; asserting one says that the property is eventually satisfied. The typical way
to prove a liveness property is with a progress function, a function f on
states that (a) drops by at least 1 every time something that happens infinitely often happens (like an action from an always-enabled task class) and
(b) guarantees P once it reaches 0.
An example would be the following property we might demand of our
spambot: any trace with at least one setMessage(. . . ) action contains infinitely many spam(. . . ) actions. Whether the spambot automaton will
satisfy this property (in fair traces) depends on its task partition. If all
spam(. . . ) actions are in the same equivalence class, then any execution with
at least one setMessage will have some spam (. . . ) action enabled at all times
thereafter, so a fair trace containing a setMessage cant be finite (since spam
is enabled in the last state) and if infinite contains infinitely many spam messages (since spam messages of some sort are enabled in all but an initial finite
prefix). On the other hand, if spam(m1 ) and spam(m2 ) are not equivalent in

APPENDIX D. I/O AUTOMATA

331

task(A), then the spambot doesnt satisfy the liveness property: in an execution that alternates setMessage(m1 )setMessage(m2 )setMessage(m1 )setMessage(m2 ) . . .
there are infinitely many states in which spam(m1 ) is not enabled, so fairness
doesnt require doing it even once, and similarly for spam(m2 ).
D.2.2.3

Other properties

Any other property P can be expressed as the intersection of a safety property (the closure of P ) and a liveness property (the union of P and the set of
all finite sequences that arent prefixes of traces in P ). The intuition is that
the safety property prunes out the excess junk we threw into the liveness
property to make it a liveness property, since any sequence that isnt a prefix
of a trace in P wont go into the safety property. This leaves only the traces
in P .
Example: Let P = {0n 1 } be the set of traces where we eventually give
up on our pointless 0-action and start doing only 1-actions forever. Then P
is the intersection of the safety property S = {0n 1m } P (the extra junk is
from prefix-closure) and the liveness property L = {0n 11m 0x|xin{0, 1} }P .
Property S says that once we do a 1 we never do a 0, but allows finite
executions of the form 0n where we never do a 1. Property L says that we
eventually do a 1-action, but that we cant stop unless we later do at least
one 0-action.

D.2.3

Compositional arguments

The product of trace properties P1 , P2 . . . is the trace property P where

T is in P if and only if T |sig(Pi ) is in Pi for each i. If the {Ai } satisfy
corresponding propertties {Pi } individually, then their composition satisfies
the product property. (For safety properties, often we prove something
weaker about the Ai , which is that each Ai individually is not the first to
violate P i.e., it cant leave P by executing an internal or output action.
In an execution where inputs by themselves cant violate P , P then holds.)
Product properties let us prove trace properties by smashing together
properties of the component automata, possibly with some restrictions on
the signatures to get rid of unwanted actions. The product operation itself
is in a sense a combination of a Cartesian product (pick traces ti and smash
them together) filtered by a consistency rule (the smashed trace must be
consistent); it acts much like intersection (and indeed can be made identical
to intersection if we treat a trace property with a given signature as a way
of describing the set of all T such that T |sig(Pi ) is in Pi ).

APPENDIX D. I/O AUTOMATA

D.2.3.1

332

Example

Consider two spambots A1 and A2 where we identify the spam(m) operation

of A1 with the setMessage(m) operation of A2 ; well call this combined action
spam1 (m) to distinguish it from the output actions of A2 . Wed like to
argue that the composite automaton A1 + A2 satisfies the safety property
(call it Pm ) that any occurrence of spam(m) is preceded by an occurrence
of setMessage(m), where the signature of Pm includes setMessage(m) and
spam(m) for some specific m but no other operations. (This is an example
of where trace property signatures can be useful without being limited to
actions of any specific component automaton.)
0 , which is P
To do so, well prove a stronger property Pm
m modified
0 is the
to include the spam1 (m) action in its signature. Observe that Pm
0 ), since
product of the safety properties for A1 and A2 restricted to sig(Pm
the later says that any trace that includes spam(m) has a previous spam1 (m)
and the former says that any trace that includes spam1 (m) has a previous
setMessage(m). Since these properties hold for the individual A1 and A2 ,
0 , holds for A + A , and so P (as
their product, and thus the restriction Pm
1
2
m
a further restriction) holds for A1 + A2 as well.
Now lets prove the liveness property for A1 + A2 , that at least one
occurrence of setMessage yields infinitely many spam actions. Here we
let L1 = {at least one setMessage action infinitely many spam1 actions}
and L2 = {at least one spam1 action infinitely many spam actions}. The
product of these properties is all sequences with (a) no setMessage actions
or (b) infinitely many spam actions, which is what we want. This product
holds if the individual properties L1 and L2 hold for A1 + A2 , which will be
the case if we set task(A1 ) and task(A2 ) correctly.

D.2.4

Simulation arguments

Show that traces(A) is a subset of traces(B) (possibly after hiding some

actions of A) by showing a simulation relation f : states(A) states(B)
between states of A and states of B. Requirements on f are
1. If s is in start(A), then f (s) includes some element of start(B).
2. If (s, a, s0 ) is in trans(A) and s is reachable, then for any reachable u
in f (s), there is a sequence of actions x that takes u to some v in f (s0 )
with trace(x) = trace(a).
Using these we construct an execution of B matching (in trace) an execution of A by starting in f (s0 ) and applying the second part of the definition

APPENDIX D. I/O AUTOMATA

333

to each action in the A execution (including the hidden ones!)

D.2.4.1

Example

A single spambot A can simulate the conjoined spambots A1 +A2 . Proof: Let
f (s) = (s, s). Then f () = (, ) is a start state of A1 + A2 . Now consider
a transition (s, a, s0 ) of A; the action a is either (a) setMessage(m), giving
s0 = m; here we let x = setMessage(m)spam1 (m) with trace(x) = trace(a)
since spam1 (m) is internal and f (s0 ) = (m, m) the result of applying x; or (b)
a = spam(m), which does not change s or f (s); the matching x is spam(m),
which also does not change f (s) and has the same trace.
A different proof could take advantage of f being a relation by defining
f (s) = {(s, s0 )|s0 states(A2 )}. Now we dont care about the state of
A2 , and treat a setMessage(m) action of A as the sequence setMessage(m)
in A1 + A2 (which updates the first component of the state correctly) and
treat a spam(m) action as spam1 (m)spam(m) (which updates the second
componentwhich we dont care aboutand has the correct trace.) In
some cases an approach of this sort is necessary because we dont know
which simulated state we are heading for until we get an action from A.
Note that the converse doesnt work: A1 + A2 dont simulate A, since
there are traces of A1 +A2 (e.g. setMessage(0)spam1 (0)setMessage(1)spam(0))
that dont restrict to traces of A. See [Lyn96, 8.5.5] for a more complicated
example of how one FIFO queue can simulate two FIFO queues and vice
versa (a situation called bisimulation).
Since we are looking at traces rather than fair traces, this kind of simulation doesnt help much with liveness properties, but sometimes the connection between states plus a liveness proof for B can be used to get a liveness
proof for A (essentially we have to argue that A cant do infinitely many
action without triggering a B-action in an appropriate task class). Again
see [Lyn96, 8.5.5].

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Index
-high-quality quorum, 105
-agreement, 273
-intersecting quorum system, 104
b-disseminating quorum system, 103
b-masking quorum system, 104
k-connectivity, 270
k-neighborhood, 41
k-set agreement, 254, 255, 311
0-valent, 63
1-valent, 63
abstract simplicial complex, 257
accepter, 67
accessible state, 7
accuracy, 74
action, 325
input, 325
internal, 325
output, 325
active round, 41
adaptive, 208, 216
adaptive adversary, 193
adaptive collect, 217
admissible, 8
adopt-commit object, 195
adopt-commit protocol, 195
adversary
adaptive, 193
content-oblivious, 15, 193
intermediate, 193
location-oblivious, 193
oblivious, 15, 193

strong, 193
value-oblivious, 193
weak, 193
agreement, 13, 43, 62
-, 273
k-set, 254, 255, 311
approximate, 273, 301
Byzantine, 50
probabilistic, 196
randomized, 15
safe, 248
simplex, 268
synchronous, 43
alpha synchronizer, 28, 94
anonymous, 32
anti-consensus, 320
append, 316
append-and-fetch, 316
approximate agreement, 273, 301
array
max, 181
asynchronous, 8
Asynchronous Computability Theorem, 267
asynchronous message-passing, 2, 8
atomic, 115, 222
atomic queue, 2
atomic register, 108
atomic registers, 2
atomic snapshot object, 153
average-case complexity, 38

351

INDEX
collect, 120, 153
adaptive, 217
coordinated, 167
colorless task, 252
common node, 56
common2, 186
communication pattern, 45
commuting object, 186
commuting operations, 143
comparability, 159
comparators, 219
compare-and-swap, 2, 113, 145
comparison-based algorithm, 40
complement, 103
completeness, 74, 186
complex
input, 258
output, 258
protocol, 267
simplicial, 255
complexity
bit, 113
message, 11
obstruction-free step, 232
space, 113
cache-coherent, 135
step, 10
capacity, 101
individual, 10, 112
CAS, 145
per-process, 112
causal ordering, 85
total, 10, 112
causal shuffle, 86
time, 10, 112
Chandra-Toueg consensus protocol, 79 composite register, 154
chromatic subdivision, 267
computation event, 6
class G, 241
conciliator, 196
client, 8
concurrency detector, 287
client-server, 8
concurrent execution, 110
clock
configuration, 2, 6
logical, 85
initial, 6
Lamport, 87
connected, 258
Neiger-Toueg-Welch, 88
simply, 270
coherence, 195
consensus, 12, 192
beta synchronizer, 28
BFS, 25
BG simulation, 248
extended, 252
big-step, 112
binary consensus, 49
birthday paradox, 216
bisimulation, 333
bit complexity, 113
bivalence, 63
bivalent, 63
Borowsky-Gafni simulation, 248
bounded, 13
bounded bypass, 122
bounded fetch-and-subtract, 313
bounded wait-free, 273
breadth-first search, 25
broadcast
reliable, 80
terminating reliable, 83
busy-waiting, 112
Byzantine agreement, 50
weak, 53
Byzantine failure, 2, 50

352

INDEX
binary, 49
Chandra-Toeug, 79
randomized, 192
synchronous, 43
universality of, 150
consensus number, 140
consensus object, 149
consistency property, 111
consistent cut, 89
consistent scan, 154
consistent snapshot, 89
content-oblivious adversary, 15, 193
contention, 113, 240
contention management, 240
contention manager, 230
continuous function, 266
convergecast, 22
Convergence., 195
coordinated attack, 12
randomized, 14
coordinated collect, 167
coordinator, 79
copy
memory-to-memory, 146
counter, 287
counting network, 219
course staff, xviii
cover, 133
crash failure, 2, 44
crashes fully, 45
critical, 121
critical section, 121
deadlock, 122
decision bit, 195
delivery event, 6
depth
sorting network, 219
deque, 233
detector

353
failure, 73
deterministic, 7, 32
deterministic renaming, 209
diameter, 26
direct scan, 154, 158
disk, 270
distributed breadth-first search, 21
distributed computing, 1
distributed shared memory, 115, 136
distributed shared-memory, 2
downward validity, 159
dual graph, 103
dynamic transaction, 222
Elias gamma code, 179
enabled, 325
equivalence relation, 32
event, 6
computation, 6
delivery, 6
receive, 85
send, 85
eventually perfect failure detector, 74,
76
eventually strong failure detector, 76,
311
execution, 6, 326
concurrent, 110
fair, 327
execution segment, 6
exiting, 121
exponential information gathering, 47
extended BG simulation, 252
failure
Byzantine, 2, 50
crash, 2, 44
omission, 2
failure detector, 2, 72, 73
eventually perfect, 74, 76

INDEX
eventually strong, 76, 311
perfect, 76
strong, 76
failure proability
quorum system, 101
fair, 327
fair execution, 327
fairness, 3, 8
fast path, 131
fault-tolerance
quorum system, 101
faulty, 44
fetch-and-add, 113, 144
fetch-and-cons, 114, 145, 152
fetch-and-increment, 307
fetch-and-subtract
bounded, 313
flooding, 18, 25
Frankenexecution, 51
full-information algorithm, 48
full-information protocol, 40
function
continuous, 266
global synchronizer, 93
Gnutella, 19
handshake, 157
happens-before, 85, 94
hierarchy
robust, 140
wait-free, 140
high quality quorum, 105
historyless, 295
historyless object, 173, 186
homeomorphism, 256
homotopy, 270
I/O automaton, 325
identity, 33
IIS, 260

354
immediacy, 260
impossibility, 3, 4
indirect scan, 154, 158
indistinguishability, 4, 44
indistinguishability proof, 13
indistinguishability proofs, 7
indistinguishable, 13
individual step complexity, 10, 112
individual work, 112
initial configuration, 6
initiator, 25
input action, 325
input complex, 258
instructor, xviii
interfering operations, 143
intermediate adversary, 193
internal action, 325
interval, 110
invariant, 3, 4
invariants, 330
invocation, 110, 115
iterated immediate snapshot, 260
join, 159
Knigs lemma, 13
Lamport clock, 87
lattice, 159
lattice agreement, 159
leader election, 11
learner, 67
left null, 233
limit-closed, 330
linearizability, 111, 118
linearizable, 111, 115
linearization, 118
linearization point, 111, 156
liveness, 3, 4
liveness property, 329, 330
LL/SC, 145, 224

INDEX
load, 101
load balancing, 216
load-linked, 145, 224
load-linked/store-conditional, 2, 167,
224
load-linked/stored-conditional, 145
local coin, 192
local synchronizer, 93
location-oblivious adversary, 193
lock-free, 229
lockable register, 309
lockout, 122
lockout-freedom, 122
logical clock, 85, 87
Lamport, 87
Neiger-Toueg-Welch, 88
long-lived renaming, 211, 216
long-lived strong renaming, 216
lower bound, 4

355
counting, 219
overlay, 8
renaming, 218
sorting, 218
node
common, 56
non-blocking, 222, 229
non-triviality, 44
nonce, 117
nondeterminism, 1
nondeterministic solo termination, 205
null
left, 233
right, 233
null path, 270
null-homotopic, 270

object, 108
commuting, 186
historyless, 173, 186
resilient, 171
map
ring buffer, 317
simplicial, 266
snapshot, 153, 171
max array, 181
swap, 173
max register, 176
oblivious adversary, 15, 193
meet, 159
obstruction-free, 229
memory stall, 240
obstruction-free step complexity, 232
memory-to-memory copy, 146
omission failure, 2
memory-to-memory swap, 145
one-time building blocks, 130
message complexity, 11
operation, 66
message-passing, 2
operations
asynchronous, 2, 8
commuting, 143
semi-synchronous, 2
interfering, 143
synchronous, 2, 10
overwriting, 143
multi-writer multi-reader register, 109
oracle, 233
multi-writer register, 109
order-equivalent, 40
mutual exclusion, 113, 121
order-preserving renaming, 209
mutual exclusion protocol, 121
ordering
Neiger-Toueg-Welch clock, 88
causal, 85
network, 8
output action, 325

INDEX
output complex, 258
overlay network, 8
overwriting operations, 143
participating set, 268
path
null, 270
path-connected, 266
Paxos, 66
per-process step complexity, 112
per-process work, 112
perfect failure detector, 76
persona, 201
perturbable, 173, 174
phase king, 57
preference, 276
prefix code, 178
prefix-closed, 330
probabilistic agreement, 196
probabilistic quorum system, 104
probabilistic termination, 192
process, 6
product, 331
progress, 122
progress function, 330
progress measure, 4
proof
impossibility, 4
invariant, 4
liveness, 4
lower bound, 4
safety, 4
termination, 4
property
stable, 91
proposer, 67
protocol complex, 267
queue
atomic, 2

356
wait-free, 144
with peek, 145
quiesce, 20
quiescent, 40, 326
quorum
-high-quality, 105
high quality, 105
quorum size, 101
quorum system, 100
-intersecting, 104
b-disseminating, 103
b-masking, 104
probabilistic, 104
signed, 106
strict, 104
racing counters, 231
Ramsey theory, 41
Ramseys Theorem, 41
randomization, 2, 33
randomized agreement, 15
randomized consensus, 192
randomized coordinated attack, 14
randomized splitter, 217
RatRace, 217
read, 115
read-modify-write, 113, 122
receive event, 85
register, 108, 115
atomic, 2, 108
composite, 154
lockable, 309
max, 176
multi-writer, 109
single-reader, 109
single-writer, 109
relation
simulation, 332
reliable broadcast, 80
terminating, 83

INDEX

357

sense of direction, 32
sequential consistency, 111
sequential execution, 115
server, 8
session, 98
session problem, 97
shared memory, 2
distributed, 115
sifter, 199
signature, 325
signed quorum system, 106
similar, 40, 85
simplex, 256
simplex agreement, 268
simplicial complex, 255, 256
abstract, 257
simplicial map, 266
simply connected, 270
simulation, 3, 329
simulation relation, 332
single-reader single-writer register, 109
single-use swap object, 189
single-writer multi-reader register, 109
single-writer register, 109
slow path, 131
snapshot, 153
snapshot object, 171
safe agreement, 248
software transactional memory, 222
safety, 3
solo termination, 173
safety property, 4, 328, 329
solo-terminating, 173, 229
scan
sorting network, 218
direct, 154, 158
space complexity, 113
indirect, 154, 158
special action, 98
schedule, 6
Sperners Lemma, 255
admissible, 8
sphere, 270
semi-lattice, 160
splitter, 129, 130
semi-synchronous message-passing, 2
randomized, 217
semisynchrony
splitters, 212
unknown-bound, 235
spread, 274
send event, 85
stable property, 91
remainder, 121
remote memory reference, 112, 135
renaming, 130, 207
deterministic, 209
long-lived, 211
long-lived strong, 216
order-preserving, 209
strong, 208, 216
tight, 208
renaming network, 218
replicated state machine, 66, 91
representative, 202
request, 8
reset, 122
ReShuffle, 218
resilience, 171
resilient object, 171
response, 8, 66, 110, 115
restriction, 7
right null, 233
ring, 32
ring buffer object, 317
RMR, 112, 135
RMW, 113
robust hierarchy, 140
round, 10, 69, 112

INDEX
staff, xviii
stall, 240
starvation, 3
state, 6, 66
accessible, 7
static transaction, 222
step complexity, 10
individual, 112
obstruction-free, 232
per-process, 112
total, 112
sticky bit, 114, 145
two-writer, 289
sticky register, 114
STM, 222
store-conditional, 145, 224
strict quorum system, 104
strong adversary, 193
strong failure detector, 76
strong renaming, 208, 216
subdivision, 260
chromatic, 267
suspect, 73
swap, 144
memory-to-memory, 145
swap object, 173
single-use, 189
symmetry, 32
symmetry breaking, 32
synchronizer, 10, 25, 93
alpha, 28, 94
beta, 28, 94
gamma, 95
global, 93
local, 93
synchronizers, 3
synchronous agreement, 43
synchronous message-passing, 2, 10
task

358
colorless, 252
teaching fellow, xviii
terminating reliable broadcast, 83
termination, 4, 13, 43, 62, 192
solo, 173
test-and-set, 113, 122, 144, 187
tight renaming, 208
time complexity, 10, 112
time-to-live, 19
torus, 299
total step complexity, 10, 112
total work, 112
trace, 326
trace property, 329
transaction, 222
dynamic, 222
static, 222
transactional memory
software, 222
transition function, 7
transition relation, 325
transitive closure, 86
triangulation, 261
trying, 121
Two Generals, 3, 12
two-writer sticky bit, 289
unidirectional ring, 33
uniform, 38
univalent, 63
universality of consensus, 150
unknown-bound semisynchrony, 235
unsafe, 249
upward validity, 159
validity, 13, 43, 62
downward, 159
upward, 159
value-oblivious adversary, 193
values, 195

INDEX
vector clock, 89
wait-free, 110, 140, 229
bounded, 273
wait-free hierarchy, 140
wait-free queue, 144
wait-freedom, 160, 229
weak adversary, 193
weak Byzantine agreement, 53
weird condition, 244
width, 113
sorting network, 219
wire, 219
work
individual, 112
per-process, 112
total, 112
write, 115

359

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