2006 USENIX Annual Technical Conference Abstract
Pp. 301–314 of the Proceedings
Loose Synchronization for Large-Scale Networked Systems
Jeannie Albrecht, Christopher Tuttle, Alex C. Snoeren, and Amin Vahdat, University of California, San Diego
Abstract
Traditionally, synchronization barriers ensure that no cooperating
process advances beyond a specified point until all processes have
reached that point. In heterogeneous large-scale distributed computing
environments, with unreliable network links and machines that may become
overloaded and unresponsive, traditional barrier semantics are too
strict to be effective for a range of emerging applications. In this
paper, we explore several relaxations, and introduce a partial
barrier, a synchronization primitive designed to enhance liveness in
loosely coupled networked systems. Partial barriers are robust to
variable network conditions; rather than attempting to hide the
asynchrony inherent to wide-area settings, they enable appropriate
application-level responses. We evaluate the improved performance of
partial barriers by integrating them into three publicly available
distributed applications running across PlanetLab. Further, we show how
partial barriers simplify a re-implementation of MapReduce that targets
wide-area environments.
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