We present results regarding consistent-cut protocols. Consistent-cut protocols are based on finding a consistent global state in an underlying distributed computation; they are used for a variety of applications such as checkpointing and deadlock detection. We formally define what it means for a protocol to be non-inhibitory, which intuitively means that it does not prevent any actions from occurring in an underlying computation. We prove that there is no non-inhibitory consistent-cut protocol for non-FIFO asynchronous systems. We also give a lower bound on communication for non-inhibitory consistent-cut protocols for FIFO systems of one message per bidirectional channel (up to 1/2(n2 — n)). We present two protocols, one non-inhibitory requiring up to two messages between each pair of neighboring nodes in a network and the other inhibitory and requiring only 3(n−1) messages total. In most networks these results illustrate a tradeoff between the amount of necessary communication and the willingness to inhibit actions of the underlying system. Additionally, our inhibitory protocol also works for non-FIFO systems, thus illustrating that the inhibitory condition is exactly what is required to develop consistent-cut protocols for non-FIFO systems which satisfy our model.
CITATION STYLE
Taylor, K. (1989). The role of inhibition in asynchronous consistent-cut protocols. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) (Vol. 392 LNCS, pp. 280–291). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-51687-5_50
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