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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Techniques for simplifying the design of distributed systems

Thesis/Dissertation ·
OSTI ID:6088902

Distributed computing systems offer a number of advantages over centralized systems, such as the replication of data and functionality, which may result in increased performance and fault tolerance. The design of protocols for distributed systems is more complex than for centralized systems because coordination and cooperation between the different processors can be difficult to achieve. Among the factors complicating this design are the following: lack of processor synchronization, lack of common knowledge, and processor failures. This thesis presents techniques for simplifying the design of distributed systems by addressing these three complicating factors. The design of fault-tolerant protocols is simplified through methods that automatically translate protocols tolerant of benign failures into ones tolerant of more severe failures. The design task is reduced to that of designing simpler protocols.

Research Organization:
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (USA)
OSTI ID:
6088902
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English