Distributed Algorithms (236357) Winter 2000

Home assignment # 4

Please note that you need to submit this assignment only if you want to improve your home assignments grade.
Grades for assignment #3 will be published around 29.1.2001.

Question 1.  CANCELLED

[Question 8.6 from the book.]
Prove that Algorithm 8.1 provides the causal ordering property, if each point-to-point link delivers messages in FIFO order.
(Note that we do not assume single-source FIFO broadcast.)


Question 2.

[Question 8.9 from the book.]
Show that Algorithm 8.2 does not provide total ordering.
That is, construct an execution in which (concurrent) messages are not received in the same order by all processors.


Question 3.

[Question 10.7 from the book.]
Prove Lemma 10.7.
That is, consider the timestamps generated by Algorithm 10.3 (multi-writer registers from single-writer registers), and show that the lexicographic order on them is a total order which extends the partial order in which they were generated.
 


Question 4.

Fill-in the details of the atomic snapshots algorithm using unbounded sequence number: Specify the algorithm and prove its correctness and complexity.

This is based on material in Section 10.3 of the book.
The answer appears in reference [3]:

@Article{AfekADGMS93,
  author =       "Yehuda Afek and Hagit Attiya and Danny Dolev and Eli Gafni and Michael Merritt and Nir Shavit",
  title =        "Atomic Snapshots of Shared Memory",
  journal =      jacm,
  volume =       "40",
  number =       "4",
  month =        sep,
  year =         "1993",
  pages =        "873--890",
}

Submission date: 7.2.2001