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Summary: Unifying Stabilization and Termination in Message-Passing Systems
Anish Arora
Dept. of Computer and Information Science,
Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH 43210,
anish@cis.ohio-state.edu
Mikhail Nesterenko
Mathematics and Computer Science,
Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242,
mikhail@mcs.kent.edu
Abstract
The paper dispels the myth that it is impossible for
any stabilizing message-passing program to be termi-
nating. We identify xpoint-symmetry as a necessary
condition for a message-passing stabilizing program to
be terminating. Our results do con rm that a num-
ber of well-known input-output problems (e.g., leader
election and consensus) do not admit a terminating
and stabilizing solution. On the
ip side, they show
that reactive problems such as mutual exclusion and
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