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Unit 2 DC

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Unit 2 DC

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Priyadharshini K
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© © All Rights Reserved
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ROHINI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

CS 3551 DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING


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 Asynchronous System – Group Communication – Causal Order
– Total Order; Global State and Snapshot Recording Algorithms: Introduction – System Model
and Definitions – Snapshot Algorithms for FIFO Channels
Logical Time
Definition
A system of logical clocks consists of a time domain T and a logical clock C. Elements of
T form a partially ordered set over a relation <. This relation is usually called the happened before
or causal precedence. Intuitively, this relation is analogous to the earlier than relation provided by
the physical time. 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) and called the timestamp of e, and is defined as
follows:

C : H  T,

such that the following property is satisfied: for two events ei and ej ,
ei → ej  C(ei) < C(ej ). This monotonicity property is called the clock consistency condition.

When T and C satisfy the following condition, for two events

ei and ej , ei →ej ⇔ C(ei) < C(ej ),

the system of clocks is said to be strongly consistent.

Implementing logical clocks

Implementation of logical clocks requires addressing two issues: data structures local to
every process to represent logical time and a protocol (set of rules) to update the data structures to
ensure the consistency condition.

Each process pi maintains data structures that allow it the following two capabilities:

CS3551 DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING


ROHINI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

1. A local logical clock, denoted by lci, that helps process pi measure its own progress.
2. A logical global clock, denoted by gci, that is a representation of process pi’s local view of
the logical global time. It allows this process to assign consistent timestamps to its local
events. Typically, lci is a part of gci.

The protocol ensures that a process’s logical clock, and thus its view of the global time, is
managed consistently. The protocol consists of the following two rules:

1. R1 This rule governs how the local logical clock is updated by a process when it executes
an event (send, receive, or internal).
2. R2 This rule governs 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

Definition:

The scalar time representation was proposed by Lamport in 1978 as an attempt to totally
order events in a distributed system. Time domain in this representation is the set of non-negative
integers. The logical local clock of a process pi and its local view of the global time are squashed
into one integer variable Ci.

Rules R1 and R2 to update the clocks are as follows:

1. R1 Before executing an event (send, receive, or internal), process pi executes the


following:

Ci :=Ci+d (d > 0)

In general, every time R1 is executed, d can have a different value, and this value
may be application-dependent. However, typically d is kept at 1 because this is able to
identify the time of each event uniquely at a process, while keeping the rate of increase of
d to its lowest level.

CS3551 DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING


ROHINI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

2. R2 Each message piggybacks the clock value of its sender at sending time. When
a process pi receives a message with timestamp Cmsg, it executes the following
actions:

1. Ci := max(Ci, Cmsg,);
2. execute R1;
3. deliver the message.
Figure shows the evolution of scalar time with d=1.

Figure: Evolution of scalar time

Basic properties

Consistency property

Clearly, scalar clocks satisfy the monotonicity and hence the consistency property:

for two events ei and ej, ei →ej =⇒ C(ei) < C(ej ).

Total Ordering

Scalar clocks can be used to totally order events in a distributed system. The main problem
in totally ordering events is that two or more events at different processes may have an identical
timestamp.

Event counting

If the increment value d is always 1, the scalar time has the following interesting property:
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; we call it the height of the event e.

CS3551 DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING


ROHINI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

No strong consistency

The system of scalar clocks is not strongly consistent; that is, for two events ei and ej,

C(ei) < C(ej) ⇏ei→ej

CS3551 DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING

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