TY - JOUR
T1 - Using knowledge to optimally achieve coordination in distributed systems
AU - Neiger, Gil
AU - Bazzi, Rida
N1 - Funding Information:
* Corresponding author. E-mail: bazzi@asu.edu. ’ This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grants CCR-8909663, CCR-9106627, and CCR-9301454. An earlier version of this paper appeared in: Yoram Moses (Ed.), Proc. 4th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning about knowledge, Morgan-Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, March 1992, pp. 43-59. * This author was supported in part by a scholarship from the Hariri Foundation.
PY - 1999/6/6
Y1 - 1999/6/6
N2 - A distributed computing system consists of a set of individual processors that communicate through some medium. Coordinating the actions of such processors is essential in distributed computing. Researchers have long endeavored to find efficient solutions to a variety of coordination problems. Recently, processor knowledge has been used to characterize such solutions and to derive more efficient ones. Most of this work has concentrated on the relationship between common knowledge and simultaneous coordination. This paper considers non-simultaneous coordination problems. The results of this paper add to our understanding of the relationship between knowledge and the different requirements of coordination problems. This paper considers the ideas of optimal and optimum solutions to a coordination problem and precisely characterizes the problems for which optimum solutions exist. This characterization is based on combinations of eventual common knowledge and continual common knowledge. The paper then considers more general problems, for which optimal, but no optimum, solutions exist. It defines a new form of knowledge, called extended knowledge, which combines eventual and continual knowledge, and shows how extended knowledge can be used to both characterize and construct optimal protocols for coordination.
AB - A distributed computing system consists of a set of individual processors that communicate through some medium. Coordinating the actions of such processors is essential in distributed computing. Researchers have long endeavored to find efficient solutions to a variety of coordination problems. Recently, processor knowledge has been used to characterize such solutions and to derive more efficient ones. Most of this work has concentrated on the relationship between common knowledge and simultaneous coordination. This paper considers non-simultaneous coordination problems. The results of this paper add to our understanding of the relationship between knowledge and the different requirements of coordination problems. This paper considers the ideas of optimal and optimum solutions to a coordination problem and precisely characterizes the problems for which optimum solutions exist. This characterization is based on combinations of eventual common knowledge and continual common knowledge. The paper then considers more general problems, for which optimal, but no optimum, solutions exist. It defines a new form of knowledge, called extended knowledge, which combines eventual and continual knowledge, and shows how extended knowledge can be used to both characterize and construct optimal protocols for coordination.
KW - Common knowledge
KW - Distributed coordination
KW - Knowledge
KW - Optimal algorithms
KW - Optimum algorithms
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U2 - 10.1016/S0304-3975(98)00236-9
DO - 10.1016/S0304-3975(98)00236-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0009734557
SN - 0304-3975
VL - 220
SP - 31
EP - 65
JO - Theoretical Computer Science
JF - Theoretical Computer Science
IS - 1
ER -