Lightweight Causal and Atomic Group Multicast

Abstract

The ISIS toolkit is a distributed programming environment based on support for virtually synchronous process groups and group communication. We present a new suite of protocols in support of this model. Our approach revolves around a multicast primitive, called CBCAST, which implements a fault tolerant, causally ordered message delivery. This primitive can be used directly, or extended into a totally ordered multicast primitive, called ABCAST. It normally delivers messages immediately upon reception, and imposes a space overhead proportional to the size of the groups to which the sender belongs, usually a small number. We conclude that process groups and group communication can achieve performance and scaling comparable to that of a raw message transport layer - finding contradicting the widespread concern that this style of distributed computing may be unacceptably costly.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA233887

Entities

People

  • Andre Schiper
  • Kenneth O. Birman
  • Pat Stephenson

Organizations

  • Cornell University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Algorithms
  • Communication Channels
  • Communication Systems
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Computing System Architectures
  • Damage Detection
  • Distributed Computing
  • Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
  • Fault Tolerance
  • Group Processes (Social Psychology)
  • Local Area Networks
  • Operating Systems
  • Peer Groups
  • Transport Protocols

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Fault Tolerant Diagnosis of Black and White Balloon Isolation Tests Using ¥.
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Theoretical Analysis.

Technology Areas

  • Space