Showing papers by "Michael Merritt published in 2013"

Computing with infinitely many processes

Abstract: We explore four classic problems in concurrent computing (election, mutual exclusion, consensus, and naming) when the number of processes which may participate is unbounded. Partial information about the number of processes actually participating and the concurrency level is shown to affect the computability and complexity of solving these problems when using only atomic registers. We survey and generalize work carried out in models with known bounds on the number of processes, and prove several new results. These include improved bounds for election when participation is required and a new adaptive starvation-free mutual exclusion algorithm for unbounded concurrency. We also survey results in models with shared objects stronger than atomic registers, such as test&set bits, semaphores or read-modify-write registers, and update them for the unbounded case.

Plenary talk

Abstract: Michael Merritt is Executive Director of the Cross-Layer Analytics and Design Research Department, responsible for applied research directed at application, network, and infrastructure design and performance with particular emphasis on interactions that cross layers of abstraction and technology. Michael has published over thirty-five research articles, co-authored a book on database concurrency control, holds five patents, and served for many years as an area editor of Distributed Computing and the Journal of the ACM. He is a recognized expert in distributed computing, computer security, and network traffic analysis. He has taught at Georgia Tech, MIT, Stevens Institute of Technology, and Columbia University.