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A thought experiment on Quantum Mechanics and Distributed Failure Detection
One of the biggest problems in current distributed systems is that presented
by one machine attempting to determine the liveness of another in a timely
manner. Unfortunately, the symptoms exhibited by a failed machine can also be
the result of other causes, e.g., an overloaded machine or network which drops
messages, making it impossible to detect a machine failure with cetainty until
that machine recovers. This is a well understood problem and one which has led
to a large body of research into failure suspectors: since it is not possible
to detect a failure, the best one can do is suspect a failure and program
accordingly. However, one machine's suspicions may not be the same as
another's; therefore, these algorithms spend a considerable effort in ensuring
a consistent view among all available machines of who is suspects of being
failed. This paper describes a thought experiment on how quantum mechanics may
be used to provide a failure detector that is guaranteed to give both accurate
and instantaneous information about the liveness of machines, no matter the
distances involved