July 2nd, 2018 (16:45 | HS3): Prof. Michel Raynal gives a talk

on "Set-Constrained Delivery Broadcast: Definition, Abstraction Power, and Computability Limit" ...

 

Abstract:

This talk will introduce a new communication abstraction, called "Set-Constrained Delivery Broadcast" (SCD-broadcast), whose aim is to provide its users with an appropriate abstraction level when they have to implement "objects" or "distributed tasks" in an asynchronous message-passing system prone to process crash failures. This abstraction allows each process to broadcast messages and deliver a sequence of sets of messages in such a way that, if a process delivers a set of messages including a message m and later delivers a set of messages including a message m', no process delivers first a set of messages including m' and later a set of message including m. After having presented an algorithm implementing SCD-broadcast, the talk will investigate its programming power and its computability limits. On the ``power'' side it presents SCD-broadcast-based algorithms, which are both simple and efficient, building objects (such as snapshot and conflict-free replicated data), and distributed tasks. On the ``computability limits'' side it shows that SCD-broadcast and read/write registers are computationally equivalent.

 

Short biography:

Michel Raynal is an Emeritus Professor of Informatics, IRISA, University of Rennes (France) and a Chair Professor at Polytechnic University of Hong Kong. His main research interests are the basic principles of distributed computing systems. Recognized as a world leading researcher in distributed computing, he is a senior member of the prestigious Institut Universitaire de France, and a member of Academia Europaea. He was the recipient of the 2015 "Int'l Award "Innovation in Distributed Computing" (also known as SIROCCO Prize), and received the "Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement" from the IEEE Technical Committee on Distributed Processing. Michel Raynal chaired the program committee of the major conferences on distributed computing and has been member (or head) of their steering committees. He is also the recipient of several "Best Paper" awards of major conferences (including ICDCS 1999, 2000 and 2001, SSS 2009 and 2011, Europar 2010, DISC 2010, PODC 2014). He supervised more than 45 PhD students, and wrote twelve books. The leqt one "Fault-Tolerant Message-Passing Distributed Systems: An Algorithmic Approach" will appear in july 2018, published by Springer.