SSS'24

On Distributed Computing: A View, Physical vs Logical Objects, and a Look at Fully Anonymous Systems

Abstract

This talk presents a short (and partial) history of synchronization in systems made up of asynchronous sequential processes (automata). Among other points, it shows that synchronization (which consists in ordering operations issued by processes on shared objects) has a different flavor according to the fact that the objects are physical objects (such as a printer or a disk) or logical objects (immaterial objects represented by sequences of bits). It then follows from this physical/logical nature of computing objects that mutual exclusion is to physical objects what consensus is to logical objects. The talk also addresses recent results on process synchronization in fully anonymous systems (systems in which processes cannot be distinguished one from the other, and where there is a disagreement on the addresses of the memory registers).

About the speaker

Michel Raynal is an Emeritus Professor of Informatics, IRISA, University of Rennes, France. He is an established authority in the domain of concurrent and distributed algorithms and systems. Author of numerous papers on this topic, Michel Raynal is a senior member of Institut Universitaire de France, and a member of Academia Europaea. He was the recipient of the 2015 Innovation in Distributed Computing Award (also known as SIROCCO Prize), recipient of the 2018 IEEE Outstanding Technical Achievement in Distributed Computing Award, and recipient of an Outstanding Career Award from the French chapter of ACM Sigops. He is also Distinguished Chair Professor on Distributed Algorithms at the Polytechnic University (PolyU) of Hong Kong.

Michel Raynal chaired the program committees of the major conferences on distributed computing. He was the recipient of several ”Best Paper” awards of major conferences (including ICDCS 1999, 2000 and 2001, SSS 2009 and 2011, Europar 2010, DISC 2010, PODC 2014). He has also written 13 books on fault- tolerant concurrent (shared memory and merssage-passing) distributed systems, among which the following trilogy published by Springer: Concurrent Programming: Algorithms: Principles and Foundations (515 pages, 2013), Distributed Algorithms for Message-passing Systems (510 pages, 2013), and Fault-Tolerant Message-Passing Distributed Systems: An Algorithmic Approach Springer (459 pages, 2018). His last book titled Concurrent Crash-prone Shared Memory Systems: a Few Theoretical Notions (115 pages) has been published in 2022. Michel Raynal is also the Series Editor of the Synthesis Lectures on Distributed Com- puting Theory published by Morgan & Claypool.

More information can be found at https://team.inria.fr/wide/team/michel-raynal/