Arbitration-free synchronization

  • Authors:
  • Leslie Lamport

  • Affiliations:
  • Microsoft Research, 1065 La Avenida Mountain View, CA

  • Venue:
  • Distributed Computing - Papers in celebration of the 20th anniversary of PODC
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

Implementing traditional forms of multiprocess synchronization requires a hardware arbiter. Here, we consider what kind of synchronization is achievable without arbitration. Several kinds of simple arbiter-free registers are defined and shown to have equal power, and the class of synchronization problems solvable with such registers is characterized. More powerful forms of arbiter-free communication primitives are described. However, the problem of characterizing the most general form of arbiter-free synchronization remains unsolved.