Abstract
The vector-clock size necessary to characterize causality in a distributed computation is bounded by the dimension of the partial order induced by that computation. In theory the dimension can be as large as the number of processes in the computation, but in practice it is much smaller. We present an online algorithm to compute the dimension of a distributed computation. This algorithm requires the computation of the critical pairs of the partial order followed by the creation of extensions of the partial order. This is our next step toward the goal of creating an online vector clock whose size is bounded by the dimension of a distributed computation, not by the number of processes.
Chapter PDF
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
B. Charron-Bost Concerning the Size of Logical Clocks in Distributed Systems. Information Processing Letters, 39:11–16, July 1991.
Colin Fidge Fundamentals of Distributed systems Observation. Technical Report 93-15, Software Verification Research Centre, Department of Computer Science, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia, November 1993.
Jerry Fowler and Willy Zwaenepoel Causal Distributed Breakpoints. In Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, pages 134–141. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1990.
Jessica Zhi Han Automatic Comparison of Execution Histories in the Debugging of Distributed Applications. Master’s thesis, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, 1998.
M.T. Heath and J.A. Etheridge Visualizing the Performance of Parallel Programs. IEEE Software, pages 29–39, September 1991.
Christian E. Jaekl Event-Predicate Detection in the Debugging of Distributed Applications. Master’s thesis, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, 1997.
Thomas Kunz Abstract Behaviour of Distributed Executions with Applications to Visualization. PhD thesis, Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany, 1994.
Thomas Kunz, James P. Black, David J. Taylor, and Twan Basten POET: Target-System Independent Visualisations of Complex Distributed-Application Executions. The Computer Journal, 40(8): 499–512, 1997.
Leslie Lamport Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in Distributed Systems. Communications of the ACM, 21(7):558–565, 1978.
F. Mattern Virtual Time and Global States of Distributed Systems. In M. Cosnard et al., editor, Proceedings of the International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Algorithms, pages 215–226, Chateau de Bonas, France, December 1988. Elsevier Science Publishers B. V. (North Holland).
Oystein Ore Theory of Graphs, volume 38. Amer. Math. Soc. Colloq. Publ., Providence, R.I., 1962.
Joseph L. Sharnowski and Betty H. C. Cheng A Visualization-based Environment for Topdown Debugging of Parallel Programs. In Proceedings of the 9th International Parallel Processing Symposium, pages 640–645. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995.
M. Singhal and A. Kshemkalyani An Efficient Implementation of Vector Clocks. Information Processing Letters, 43:47–52, August 1992.
David J. Taylor Scrolling Displays of Partially Ordered Execution Histories. In preparation.
William T. Trotter Combinatorics and Partially Ordered Sets: Dimension Theory. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 1992.
Paul Ward An Offline Algorithm for Dimension-Bound Analysis. In Proceedings of the 1999 International Conference on Parallel Processing. IEEE Computer Society Press, September 1999.
Mihalis Yannakakis The Complexity of the Partial Order Dimension Problem. SIAM Journal on Algebraic and Discrete Methods, 3(3):351–358, September 1982.
Yuh Ming Yong Replay and Distributed Breakpoints in an OSF DCE Environment. Master’s thesis, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, 1995.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ward, P. (1999). An Online Algorithm for Dimension-Bound Analysis. In: Amestoy, P., et al. Euro-Par’99 Parallel Processing. Euro-Par 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1685. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48311-X_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48311-X_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66443-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48311-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive