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Logical Time in Asynchronous Distributed Systems

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Distributed Algorithms for Message-Passing Systems

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Abstract

This chapter is on the association of consistent dates with events, local states, or global states of a distributed computation. Consistency means that the dates generated by a dating system have to be in agreement with the “causality” generated by the considered distributed execution. According to the view of a distributed execution we are interested in, this causality is the causal precedence order on events (relation \(\stackrel{ev}{\longrightarrow}\)), the causal precedence order on local states (relation \(\stackrel{\sigma}{\longrightarrow}\)), or the reachability relation in the lattice of global states (relation \(\stackrel{\varSigma }{\longrightarrow}\)), all introduced in the previous chapter. In all cases, this means that the date of a “cause” has to be earlier than the date of any of its “effects”. As we consider time-free asynchronous distributed systems, these dates cannot be physical dates. (Moreover, even if processes were given access to a global physical clock, the clock granularity should be small enough to always allow for a consistent dating.)

Three types of logical time are presented, namely, scalar (or linear) time, vector time, and matrix time. Each type of time is defined, its properties are stated, and illustrations showing how to use it are presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Universitaire de France IRISA-ISTIC, Université de Rennes 1, Rennes Cedex, France

    Michel Raynal

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  1. Michel Raynal
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Raynal, M. (2013). Logical Time in Asynchronous Distributed Systems. In: Distributed Algorithms for Message-Passing Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38123-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38123-2_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-38122-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-38123-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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