2020/10/28 by Vassos Hadzilacos, Xing Hu, Hadzilacos, Vassos +3 · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Data Structures and Algorithms (cs.DS) #Distributed #Distributed systems and fault tolerance #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Optimization and Search Problems #Parallel #and Cluster Computing (cs.DC) #semigroups and automata theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2010.15210
openalex publication_date 2020/10/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the question of whether the "termination with probability 1" property of a randomized algorithm is preserved when one replaces the atomic registers that the algorithm uses with linearizable (implementations of) registers. We show that in general this is not so: roughly speaking, every randomized algorithm A has a corresponding algorithm A' that solves the same problem if the registers that it uses are atomic or strongly-linearizable, but does not terminate if these registers are replaced with "merely" linearizable ones. Together with a previous result shown in [15], this implies that one cannot use the well-known ABD implementation of registers in message-passing systems to automatically transform any randomized algorithm that works in shared-memory systems into a randomized algorithm that works in message-passing systems: with a strong adversary the resulting algorithm may not terminate.