Showing papers by "Michael Merritt published in 1985"
01 Aug 1985
TL;DR: Easy proofs are given, of the impossibility of solving several consensus problems (Byzantine agreement, weak agreement, Byzantine firing squad, approximate agreement and clock synchronization) in certain communication graphs.
Abstract: Easy proofs are given of the impossibility of solving several consensus problems (Byzantine agreement, weak agreement, Byzantine firing squad, approximate agreement and clock synchronization) in certain communication graphs. It is shown that, in the presence of f faults, no solution to these problems exists for communication graphs with fewer than 3f+1 nodes or less than 2f+1 connectivity. While some of these results had been proven previously, the new proofs are much simpler, provide considerably more insight, apply to more general models of computation, and (particularly in the case of clock synchronization) significantly strengthen the results.
110 citations
01 Aug 1985
TL;DR: Using simple protocols, it is shown how to achieve consensus in constant expected time, within a variety of fail-stop and omission failure models, which are based on distributively flipping a coin.
15 citations