[Baypiggies] virtual synchrony

[Shannon -jj Behrens]

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 10:40 AM, K. Richard Pixley <rich at noir.com> wrote:
> I'd also be willing to present on virtual synchrony.  It's an idea from the
> 80's which largely predates threads and has never caught on for reasons I've
> never understood.
>
> In a nutshell, virtual synchrony is a system based on the idea of "reliable
> broadcast", except that the definition of "reliable" has been perverted.
>  Instead of declaring that all receivers receive a broadcast "at the same
> time", (which isn't really possible in a 4d time space continuum except for
> very coarse grained definitions of "same time"), virtual synchrony
> guarantees that all receivers receive all messages in precisely the same
> order, (or they cease to participate in the virtual synchrony).
>
> As a base mechanism for coordination, virtual synchrony can be used to build
> simple operating system concepts like mutual exclusion, shared state,
> reliable publish/subscribe mechanisms, etc.  The usual application is for
> distributed, asynchronous, parallel, fault tolerant, network based services.

That sounds like Spread: http://www.spread.org/

Happy Hacking!
-jj

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