cs3551 Unit II Notes None
cs3551 Unit II Notes None
UNIT II
LOGICAL TIME AND GLOBAL STATE
Logical Time: Physical Clock Synchronization: NTP – A Framework for a System of Logical Clocks
– Scalar Time – Vector Time; Message ordering and group communication: Message ordering
paradigms –Asynchronous execution with synchronous communication –Synchronous
program order on an asynchronous system –Group communication – Causal order (CO) –
Total order. Global state and snapshot recording algorithms: Introduction –System model and
definitions –Snapshot algorithms for FIFO channels.
LOGICAL TIME
Logical clocks are based on capturing chronological and causal relationships of processes and
ordering events based on these relationships.
In a system of logical clocks, every process has a logical clock that is advanced using
a set of rules. Every event is assigned a timestamp and the causality relation between
events can be generally inferred from their timestamps.
The timestamps assigned to events obey the fundamental monotonicity property; that
is, if an event a causally affects an event b, then the timestamp of a is smaller than the
timestamp of b.
The logical clock C is a function that maps an event e in a distributed system to an element
in the time domain T denoted as C(e).
suc
h that for any two events ei and ej,. eiej C(ei)<
C(ej).
This monotonicity property is called the clock consistency condition.When T and C
satisfy the following condition,
Data structures:
Each process pimaintains data structures with the given capabilities:
• A local logical clock (lci), that helps process pi measure itsown progress.
• A logical global clock (gci), that is a representation of process pi’s local view of the
logical global time. It allows this process to assignconsistent timestamps to its local
events.
Protocol:
The protocol ensures that a process’s logical clock, and thus its view of theglobal
time, is managed consistently with the following rules:
Rule 1: Decides the updates of the logical clock by a process. It controls send,
receive and other operations.
Rule 2: Decides how a process updates its global logical clock to update its view of the
global time and global progress. It dictates what information about the logical
time is piggybacked in a message and how this information is used by the receiving
process to update its view of the global time.
SCALAR TIME
Scalar time is designed by Lamport to synchronize all the events in distributed
systems. A Lamport logical clock is an incrementing counter maintained in each
process. This logical clock has meaning only in relation to messages moving between
processes. When a process receives a message, it resynchronizes its logical clock with
that sender maintainingcausal relationship.
The Lamport’s algorithm is governed using the following rules:
The algorithm of Lamport Timestamps can be captured in a few rules:
All the process counters start with value 0.
A process increments its counter for each event (internal event, message
sending, message receiving) in that process.
When a process sends a message, it includes its (incremented) counter value
with the message.
2. Total Reordering:Scalar clocks order the events in distributed systems.But all the
events do not follow a common identical timestamp. Hence a tie breaking mechanism
is essential to order the events. The tie breaking is done through:
Linearly order process identifiers.
Process with low identifier value will be given higher priority.
The term (t, i) indicates timestamp of an event, where t is its time of occurrence and i
is the identity of the process where it occurred.
The total order relation () over two events x and y with timestamp (h, i) and (k, j) is given by:
3. Event Counting
If event e has a timestamp h, then h−1 represents the minimum logical duration,
counted in units of events, required before producing the event e. This is called height
of the event e. h-1 events have been produced sequentially before the event e
regardless of the processes that produced these events.
4. No strong consistency
The scalar clocks are not strongly consistent is that the logical local clock and
logical global clock of a process are squashed into one, resulting in the loss causal
dependency information among events at different processes.
VECTOR TIME
The ordering from Lamport's clocks is not enough to guarantee that if two
events precede one another in the ordering relation they are also causally related.
Vector Clocks use a vector counter instead of an integer counter. The vector clock of a
system with N processes is a vector of N counters, one counter per process. Vector
counters have to follow the following update rules:
Initially, all counters are zero.
Each time a process experiences an event, it increments its own counter in the
vector by one.
Each time a process sends a message, it includes a copy of its own
(incremented) vector in the message.
Each time a process receives a message, it increments its own counter in the
vector by one and updates each element in its vector by taking the maximum of
the value in its own vector counter and the value in the vector in the received
message.
The time domain is represented by a set of n-dimensional non-negative integer vectors in vector
time.
Rule 2: Each message m is piggybacked with the vector clock vt of the sender process at sending time.
On the receipt of such a message (m,vt), process
pi executes the following sequence of actions:
update its global logical time
execute R1
deliver the message m
There is an isomorphism between the set of partially ordered events produced by a
distributed computation and their vector timestamps.
If the process at which an event occurred is known, the test to
compare two timestamps can be simplified as:
2. Strong consistency
The system of vector clocks is strongly consistent; thus, by examining the vector
timestamp of two events, we can determine if the events are causally related.
3. Event counting
If an event e has timestamp vh, vh[j] denotes the number of events executed by
process pj that causally precede e.
Clock synchronization is the process of ensuring that physically distributed processors have a
common notion of time.
Due to different clocks rates, the clocks at various sites may diverge with time, and
periodically a clock synchrinization must be performed to correct this clock skew in
distributed systems. Clocks are synchronized to an accurate real-time standard like
UTC (Universal Coordinated Time). Clocks that must not only be synchronized with
each other but also have to adhere to physical time are termed physical clocks. This
degree of synchronization additionally enables to coordinate and schedule actions
between multiple computers connected to a common network.
Features of NTP :
NTP servers have access to highly precise atomic clocks and GPU clocks
It uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to synchronize CPU clock time.
NTP Architecture:
NTP Server:
NTP uses a client-server architecture; one host is configured as the NTP server and all other hosts on the
network are configured as NTP clients. Consider the following example:
Host A is our NTP client and it is configured to use a public NTP server uk.pool.ntp.org. Host A will
periodically send an NTP request to the NTP server. The server will provide accurate data and time,
enabling system clock synchronization on Host A. NTP servers listen for NTP packets on User
Datagram Protocol (UDP) port 123. The current version is NTPv4, and it is backward compatible with
NTPv3.
Basic terminologies:
Clocking Inaccuracies
Physical clocks are synchronized to an accurate real-time standard like UTC
(Universal Coordinated Time). Due to the clock inaccuracy discussed above, a timer
(clock) is said to be working within its specification if:
minimum delay.
Fig 1.24: Behavior of clocks
Fig a) Offset and delay estimation Fig b) Offset and delay estimation
between processes from same server between processes from different servers
Let T1, T2, T3, T4 be the values of the four mostrecent timestamps. The clocks A and
B are stable andrunning at the same speed. Let a = T1 − T3 and b = T2 − T4. If the
networkdelay difference from A to B and from B to A, called differential delay, is
small, the clock offset and roundtrip delay of B relative to A at time T4are
approximately given by the following:
Each NTP message includes the latest three timestamps T1, T2, andT3, while
T4 is determined upon arrival.
Calculate Round trip delay and clock (or) Time offset value:
(i) non-FIFO
(ii) FIFO
(iii) causal order
(iv) synchronous order
There is always a trade-off between concurrency and ease of use and implementation.
Asynchronous Executions
An asynchronous execution (or A-execution) is an execution (E, ≺) for which the causality relation
is a partial order.
FIFO executions
(Fig CO executions)
Applications of Causal order: applications that requires update to shared data, to
implement distributed shared memory, and fair resource allocation in distributed
mutual exclusion.
Definition (causal order (CO) for implementations) If send(m1) ≺ send(m2) then
for each common destination d of messages m1 and m2, deliverd(m1) ≺ deliverd(m2) must
be satisfied.
if m1 and m2 are sent by the same process, then property degenerates to FIFOproperty.
In a FIFO execution, no message can be overtaken by another message between
the same (sender, receiver) pair of processes.
a) Not a CO execution.
Definition (Empty-interval execution) An execution (E,≺) is an empty-interval
(EI) execution if for each pair of events (s, r) ∈ ➚, the open interval set {x ∈ E | s
≺x
≺ r} in the partial order is empty.
Example Consider any message, say m2, in Figure 6.2(b). There does not exist any
event x such that s2 ≺ x ≺ r2. This holds for all messages in the execution. Hence,
the execution is EI.
Figure: CO Execution
Corollary: An execution (E,≺) is CO if and only if for each pair of events (s,r) ∈ ➚ and
each event e ∈ E,
• weak common past: e ≺ r ⇒ ¬(s ≺ e)
• weak common future: s ≺ e ⇒ ¬(e ≺ r).
Synchronous Execution
When all the communication between pairs of processes uses synchronous send and
receives primitives, the resulting order is the synchronous order.
The synchronous communication always involves a handshake between the receiver
and the sender, the handshake events may appear to be occurring instantaneously and
atomically.
The instantaneous communication property of synchronous executions requires a
modified definition of the causality relation because for each (s, r) ∈ T, the
send event is not causally ordered before the receive event.
The two events are viewed as being atomic and simultaneous, and neither event
precedes the other.
S2: If (s, r ∈ T, then) for all x ∈ E, [(x<< s ⇐⇒ x<<r) and (s<< x ⇐⇒ r<<
Figure 6.5 Illustrations of asynchronous executions and of crowns. (a) Crown of size 2. (b) Another crown of size 2. (c)
Crown of size 3.
Executions realizable with synchronous communication (RSC)
In an A-execution, the messages can be made to appear instantaneous if there exists
a linear extension of the execution, such that each send event is immediately
followed by its corresponding receive event. Such an A-execution that is realized
under synchronous communication is called a realizable with synchronous
communication (RSC) execution.
Non-separated linear extension: A non-separated linear extension of (E,≺) is a linear
extension of (E,≺) such that for each pair (s, r) ∈ T, the interval { x ∈ E | s ≺ x ≺ r} is
empty.
Example:
(CO Executions)
2 2 3 3 1 1
• In the above figure: <s , r , s , r , s , r > is a linear extension that is non separated.
<s2, s1, r2, s3, r3, s1> is a linear extension that is separated.
In the non-separated linear extension, if the adjacent send event and its corresponding
receive event are viewed atomically, then that pair of events shares a common past
and a common future with each other.
Crown
Let E be an execution. A crown of size k in E is a sequence <(si, ri), i ∈{0,…, k-1}> of pairs of
corresponding send and receive events such that: s0 ≺ r1, s1 ≺ r2, sk−2 ≺ rk−1, sk−1 ≺ r0.
The crown is <(s1, r1) (s2, r2)> as we have s1 ≺ r2 and s2 ≺ r1. Cyclic dependencies
may exist in a crown. The crown criterion states that an A-computation is RSC, i.e., it can be
realized on a system with synchronous communication, if and only if it contains no crown.
Simulations
The events in the RSC execution are scheduled as per some non-separated linear
extension, and adjacent (s, r) events in this linear extension are executed sequentially
in the synchronous system.
The partial order of the asynchronous execution remains unchanged.
If an A-execution is not RSC, then there is no way to schedule the events to make
them RSC, without actually altering the partial order of the given A-execution.
However, the following indirect strategy that does not alter the partial order can be
used.
Each channel Ci,j is modeled by a control process Pi,j that simulates the channel buffer.
An asynchronous communication from i to j becomes a synchronous communication
from i to Pi,j followed by a synchronous communication from Pi,j to j.
This enables the decoupling of the sender from the receiver, a feature that is essential
in asynchronous systems.
Messages used to implement synchronous order. Pi has higher priority than Pj . (a) Pi issues SEND(M).
(b) Pj issues SEND(M).
(message types)
M, ack(M), request(M), permission(M)
(1) Pi wants to execute SEND(M) to a lower priority process Pj:
Pi executes send(M) and blocks until it receives ack(M) from Pj. The send
event SEND(M) now completes.
Any M′ message (from a higher priority processes) and request(M′) request
for synchronization (from a lower priority processes) received during the
blocking period are queued.
(2) Pi wants to execute SEND(M) to a higher priority process Pj:
(2a) Pi seeks permission from Pj by executing
send(request(M)).
(2b) While Pi is waiting for permission, it remains
unblocked.
(i) If a message M′ arrives from a higher priority process Pk, Pi accepts
M′ by scheduling a RECEIVE(M′) event and then executes send(ack(M′))
to Pk.
GROUP COMMUNICATION
Group Communication:
A group is a collection of interconnected processes with abstraction. This
abstraction is to hide the message passing so that the communication looks like a normal
procedure call.
Group communication also helps the processes from different hosts to work
together and perform operations in a synchronized manner, therefore increasing the overall
performance of the system.
Group communication is done by broadcasting of messages.
Unicast Communication :
When the host process tries to communicate with a single process in a
distributed system at the same time. A point-to-point message communication
Multicast Communication : When the host process tries to communicate with a designated group of
processes in a distributed system at the same time.
Broadcast Communication : When the host process tries to communicate with every process in a
distributed system at same time.
Propagation Constraint II: it is not known that a message has been sent to d in the causal
future of Send(M), and hence it is not guaranteed using a reasoning based on transitivity that
the message M will be delivered to d in CO.
The Propagation Constraints also imply that if either (I) or (II) is false, the information
“d ∈ M.Dests” must not be stored or propagated, even to remember that (I) or (II) has been
falsified:
not in the causal future of Deliverd(M1, a)
not in the causal future of e k, c where d ∈Mk,cDests and there is no
other message sent causally between Mi,a and Mk, c to the same
destination d.
The data structures maintained are sorted row–major and then column–major:
1. Explicit tracking:
Tracking of (source, timestamp, destination) information for messages (i) not known to be
delivered and (ii) not guaranteed tobe delivered in CO, is done explicitly using the I.Dests
field of entries inlocal logs at nodes and o.Dests field of entries in messages.
Sets li,aDestsand oi,a. Dests contain explicit information of destinations to which M i,ais not
guaranteed to be delivered in CO and is not known to be delivered.
The information about d ∈Mi,a .Destsis propagated up to the earliestevents on all causal
paths from (i, a) at which it is known that M i,a isdelivered to d or is guaranteed to be
delivered to d in CO.
2. Implicit tracking:
Tracking of messages that are either (i) already delivered, or (ii) guaranteed to be
delivered in CO, is performed implicitly.
The information about messages (i) already delivered or (ii) guaranteed tobe delivered
in CO is deleted and not propagated because it is redundantas far as enforcing CO is
concerned.
It is useful in determiningwhat information that is being carried in other messages and
is being storedin logs at other nodes has become redundant and thus can be purged.
Thesemantics are implicitly stored and propagated. This information about messages
that are (i) already delivered or (ii) guaranteed to be delivered in CO is tracked
without explicitly storing it.
The algorithm derives it from the existing explicit information about messages (i) not
known to be delivered and (ii) not guaranteed to be delivered in CO, by examining
only oi,aDests or li,aDests, which is a part of the explicit information.
Multicast M4,3
At event (4, 3), the information P6 ∈M5,1.Dests in Log4 is propagated onmulticast M 4,3only
to process P6 to ensure causal delivery using the DeliveryCondition. The piggybacked
information on message M4,3sent to process P3must not contain this information because of
constraint II. As long as any future message sent to P6 is delivered in causal order w.r.t.
M4,3sent to P6, it will also be delivered in causal order w.r.t. M 5,1. And as M5,1 is already
delivered to P4, the information M 5,1Dests = ∅ is piggybacked on M4,3 sent to P 3. Similarly,
the information P6 ∈ M5,1Dests must be deleted from Log4 as it will no longer be needed,
because of constraint II. M5,1Dests = ∅ is stored in Log4 to remember that M5,1 has been
delivered or is guaranteed to be delivered in causal order to all its destinations.
Processing at P6
When message M5,1 is delivered to P6, only M5,1.Dests = P4 is added to Log6. Further, P6
propagates only M5,1.Dests = P4 on message M6,2, and this conveys the current implicit
information M5,1 has been delivered to P6 by its very absence in the explicit information.
When the information P6 ∈ M5,1Dests arrives on M4,3, piggybacked as M5,1 .Dests
= P6 it is used only to ensure causal delivery of M4,3 using the Delivery Condition,
and is not inserted in Log6 (constraint I) – further, the presence of M5,1 .Dests = P4
in Log6 implies the implicit information that M5,1 has already been delivered to
P6. Also, the absence of P4 in M5,1 .Dests in the explicit piggybacked information
implies the implicit information that M5,1 has been delivered or is guaranteed to be
delivered in causal order to P4, and, therefore, M5,1. Dests is set to ∅ in Log6.
When the information P6 ∈ M5,1 .Dests arrives on M5,2 piggybacked as M5,1. Dests
= {P4, P6} it is used only to ensure causal delivery of M4,3 using the Delivery
Condition, and is not inserted in Log6 because Log6 contains M5,1 .Dests = ∅,
which gives the implicit information that M5,1 has been delivered or is guaranteed
to be delivered in causal order to both P4 and P6.
Processing at P1
When M2,2arrives carrying piggybacked information M5,1.Dests = P6 this (new)
information is inserted in Log1.
When M6,2arrives with piggybacked information M5,1.Dests ={P4}, P1learns implicit
information M5,1has been delivered to P6 by the very absence of explicit information
P6 ∈ M5,1.Dests in the piggybacked information, and hence marks information P6 ∈
M5,1Dests for deletion from Log1. Simultaneously, M5,1Dests = P6 in Log1 implies
the implicit information that M5,1has been delivered or is guaranteed to be delivered in
causal order to P4.Thus, P1 also learns that the explicit piggybacked information
M5,1.Dests = P4 is outdated. M5,1.Dests in Log1 is set to ∅.
The information “P6 ∈M5,1.Dests piggybacked on M2,3,which arrives at P 1, is
inferred to be outdated usingthe implicit knowledge derived from M5,1.Dest= ∅”
in Log1.
TOTAL ORDER
For each pair of processes Pi and Pj and for each pair of messages Mx and My that are delivered to
both the processes, Pi is delivered Mx before My if and only if Pj is delivered Mxbefore My.
Each process sends the message it wants to broadcast to a centralized process, which
relays all the messages it receives to every other process over FIFO channels.
Complexity: Each message transmission takes two message hops and exactly n
messages in a system of n processes.
Drawbacks: A centralized algorithm has a single point of failure and congestion, and is
not an elegant solution.
Sender side
Phase 1
In the first phase, a process multicasts the message M with a locally unique tag
and the local timestamp to the group members.
Phase 2
The sender process awaits a reply from all the group members who respond with a
tentative proposal for a revised timestamp for that message M.
The await call is non-blocking.
Phase 3
The process multicasts the final timestamp to the group.
Phase 2
The receiver sends the revised timestamp back to the sender. The receiver then waits
in a non-blocking manner for the final timestamp.
Phase 3
The final timestamp is received from the multicaster. The corresponding message
entry in temp_Q is identified using the tag, and is marked as deliverable after the
revised timestamp is overwritten by the final timestamp.
The queue is then resorted using the timestamp field of the entries as the key. As the
queue is already sorted except for the modified entry for the message under
consideration, that message entry has to be placed in its sorted position in the
queue.
If the message entry is at the head of the temp_Q, that entry, and all consecutive
subsequent entries that are also marked as deliverable, are dequeued from temp_Q,
and enqueued in deliver_Q.
Complexity
This algorithm uses three phases, and, to send a message to n − 1 processes, it uses 3(n – 1)
messages and incurs a delay of three message hops
System Model
The system consists of a collection of n processes, p1, p2,…,pn that are connected
by channels.
Let Cij denote the channel from process pi to process pj.
Processes and channels have states associated with them.
The state of a process at any time is defined by the contents of processor registers,
stacks, local memory, etc., and may be highly dependent on the local context of
the distributed application.
The state of channel Cij, denoted by SCij, is given by the set of messages in transit
in the channel.
The events that may happen are: internal event, send (send (m ij)) and receive
(rec(mij)) events.
The occurrences of events cause changes in the processstate.
A channel is a distributed entity and its state depends on the local states of the
processes on which it is incident.
Law of conservation of messages: Every messagem ijthat is recorded as sent in the local state of a
process pi must be capturedin the state of the channel C ij or in the collected local state of the
receiver process pj.
In a consistent global state, every message that is recorded as received isalso recorded
as sent. Such a global state captures the notion of causalitythat a message cannot be
received if it was not sent.
Consistent global statesare meaningful global states and inconsistent global states are
not meaningful in the sense that a distributed system can never be in an
inconsistentstate.
Issue 2:
How to determine the instant when a process takes its snapshot?
The answer
Answer:
A process pj must record its snapshot before processing a message mij that was sent by
process pi after recording its snapshot.
Time t0: Initially, Account A=$600, Account B=$200, C12 =$0, C21=$0.
Time t1: Site S1 initiates a transfer of $50 from A to B. Hence, A= $550, B=$200, C12=$50, C21=$0.
Time t2: Site S2 initiates a transfer of $80 from Account B to A. Hence, A= $550,B=$120, C12 =$50,
C21=$80.
Time t3: Site S1 receives the message for a $80 credit to Account A. Hence, A=$630, B=$120, C12
=$50, C21 =$0.
• Suppose the local state of Account A is recorded at time t0 which is $600 and the local state of
Account B and channels C12 and C21 are recorded at time t2 are $120, $50, and $80,
respectively.
• Then the recorded global state shows $850 in the system. An extra $50 appears in the system.
• Reason: Global state recording activities of individual components must be coordinated.
A snapshot captures the local states of each process along with the state of each
communication channel.
Global Snapshot = Collection of individual states of each process + individual states
of each communication channel in distributed system.
Snapshot: Is a photograph of a process taken or record it quickly
A snapshot captures the local states of each process along with the state of each communication channel.
Check pointing : use a check point to restart the application incase of failure
Collecting garbage : used to remove the object that don’t have any references
Chandy–Lamport algorithm
The algorithm will record a global snapshot for each process channel.
The Chandy-Lamport algorithm uses a control message, called a marker.
Aftera site has recorded its snapshot, it sends a marker along all of its
outgoingchannels before sending out any more messages.
Since channels are FIFO, amarker separates the messages in the channel into those to
be included in the snapshot from those not to be recorded inthe snapshot.
This addresses issue I1. The role of markers in a FIFO systemis to act as delimiters
for the messages in the channels so that the channelstate recorded by the process at
the receiving end of the channel satisfies thecondition C2.
xample:
Chandy-Lamport Algorithm:
Initiating a snapshot:
Process Pi initiates the snapshot
Pi records its own state and prepares a special marker message.
Send the marker message to all other processes.
Start recording all incoming messages from channels Cij for j not equal to i.
Propagating a snapshot
For all processes Pj consider a message on channel Ckj.
If marker message is seen for the first time:
Pjrecords own sate and marks Ckj as empty
Send the marker message to all other processes.
Record all incoming messages from channels Clj for 1 not equal to j or k.
Else add all messages from inbound channels.
Terminating a snapshot
All processes have received a marker.
All process have received a marker on all the N-1 incoming channels.
A central server can gather the partial state to build a global snapshot.
Correctness of the algorithm:
Since a process records its snapshot when it receives the first marker on any incoming channel,
no messages that follow markers on the channels incoming to it are recorded in the process’s
snapshot.
A process stops recording the state of an incoming channel when a marker is received on that
channel.
Complexity:
The recording part of a single instance of the algorithm requires O(e) messages and O(d) time, where
e is the number of edges in the network and d is the diameter of the network.
The recorded global state may not correspond to any of the global states that occurred during the
computation.
This happens because a process can change its state asynchronously before the markers it sent are
received by other sites and the other sites record their states.
But the system could have passed through the recorded global states in some equivalent executions
.