Publication

Why You Can't Beat Blockchains: Consistency and High Availability in Distributed Systems

Rachid Guerraoui
2017
Working Papers

Abstract

We study the issue of data consistency in highly-available distributed systems. Specifically, we consider a distributed system that replicates its data at multiple sites, which is prone to partitions, and which is expected to be highly available. In such a setting, strong consistency, where all replicas of the system apply synchronously every operation, is not possible to implement. However, many weaker consistency criteria that allow a greater number of behaviors than strong consistency, are implementable in distributed systems. We focus on determining the strongest consistency criterion that can be implemented in a distributed system that tolerates partitions. We show that no criterion stronger than Monotonic Prefix Consistency (MPC) can be implemented. MPC is the consistency criterion underlying blockchains.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/aa5587ce-610a-4aa6-85b8-73bd1bdaeab7

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Rachid Guerraoui
2017
Working Papers

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/aa5587ce-610a-4aa6-85b8-73bd1bdaeab7

About this result

Related concepts (25)

Consistency model

In computer science, a consistency model specifies a contract between the programmer and a system, wherein the system guarantees that if the programmer follows the rules for operations on memory, memory will be consistent and the results of reading, writing, or updating memory will be predictable. Consistency models are used in distributed systems like distributed shared memory systems or distributed data stores (such as s, databases, optimistic replication systems or web caching).

Data

In common usage and statistics, data (USˈdætə; UKˈdeɪtə) is a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted formally. A datum is an individual value in a collection of data. Data is usually organized into structures such as tables that provide additional context and meaning, and which may themselves be used as data in larger structures.

Distributed operating system

A distributed operating system is system software over a collection of independent software, networked, communicating, and physically separate computational nodes. They handle jobs which are serviced by multiple CPUs. Each individual node holds a specific software subset of the global aggregate operating system. Each subset is a composite of two distinct service provisioners. The first is a ubiquitous minimal kernel, or microkernel, that directly controls that node's hardware.

Related publications (1)

Why You Can't Beat Blockchains: Consistency and High Availability in Distributed Systems

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