A Byzantine-Fault Tolerant Self-Stabilizing Protocol for Distributed Clock Synchronization Systems

Embedded distributed systems have become an integral part of safety-critical computing applications, necessitating system designs that incorporate fault tolerant clock synchronization in order to achieve ultra-reliable assurance levels. Many efficient clock synchronization protocols do not, however, address Byzantine failures, and most protocols that do tolerate Byzantine failures do not self-stabilize. Of the Byzantine self-stabilizing clock synchronization algorithms that exist in the literature, they are based on either unjustifiably strong assumptions about initial synchrony of the nodes or on the existence of a common pulse at the nodes. The Byzantine self-stabilizing clock synchronization protocol presented here does not rely on any assumptions about the initial state of the clocks. Furthermore, there is neither a central clock nor an externally generated pulse system. The proposed protocol converges deterministically, is scalable, and self-stabilizes in a short amount of time. The convergence time is linear with respect to the self-stabilization period. Proofs of the correctness of the protocol as well as the results of formal verification efforts are reported

Synchronous counting and computational algorithm design

Consider a complete communication network on n nodes, each of which is a state machine with s states. In synchronous 2-counting, the nodes receive a common clock pulse and they have to agree on which pulses are “odd” and which are “even”. We require that the solution is self-stabilising (reaching the correct operation from any initial state) and it tolerates f Byzantine failures (nodes that send arbitrary misinformation). Prior algorithms are expensive to implement in hardware: they require a source of random bits or a large number of states s. We use computational techniques to construct very compact deterministic algorithms for the first non-trivial case of f = 1. While no algorithm exists for n < 4, we show that as few as 3 states are sufficient for all values n ≥ 4. We prove that the problem cannot be solved with only 2 states for n = 4, but there is a 2-state solution for all values n ≥ 6.Peer reviewe

Self-Stabilizing Byzantine Asynchronous Unison

We explore asynchronous unison in the presence of systemic transient and permanent Byzantine faults in shared memory. We observe that the problem is not solvable under less than strongly fair scheduler or for system topologies with maximum node degree greater than two. We present a self-stabilizing Byzantine-tolerant solution to asynchronous unison for chain and ring topologies. Our algorithm has minimum possible containment radius and optimal stabilization time

Byzantine Fireflies

This paper addresses the problem of synchronous beeping, as addressed by swarms of fireflies. We present Byzantine-resilient algorithms ensuring that the correct processes eventually beep synchronously despite a subset of nodes beeping asynchronously. We assume that n > 2f (n is the number of processes and f is the number of Byzantine processes) and that the initial state of the processes can be arbitrary (self-stabilization). We distinguish the cases where the beeping period is known, unknown or approximately known. We also consider the situation where the processes can produce light continuously. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Algorithms in nature: the convergence of systems biology and computational thinking

Biologists rely on computational methods to analyze and integrate large data sets, while several computational methods were inspired by the high-level design principles of biological systems. This Perspectives discusses the recent convergence of these two ways of thinking

Self-stabilization of Byzantine Protocols

Abstract. Awareness of the need for robustness in distributed systems increases as distributed systems become integral parts of day-to-day systems. Self-stabilizing while tolerating ongoing Byzantine faults are wishful properties of a distributed system. Many distributed tasks (e.g. clock synchronization) possess e cient non-stabilizing solutions tolerating Byzantine faults or conversely non-Byzantine but self-stabilizing solutions. In contrast, designing algorithms that self-stabilize while at the same time tolerating an eventual fraction of permanent Byzantine failures present a special challenge due to the ambition of malicious nodes to hamper stabilization if the systems tries to recover from a corrupted state. This di culty might be indicated by the remarkably few algorithms that are resilient to both fault models. We present the scheme that takes a Byzantine distributed algorithm and produces its self-stabilizing Byzantine counterpart, while having a relatively low overhead of O(f ′ ) communication rounds, where f ′ is the number of actual faults. Our protocol is based on a tight Byzantine self-stabilizing pulse synchronization procedure. The synchronized pulses are used as events for initializing Byzantine agreement on every node&apos;s local state. The set of local states is used for global predicate detection. Should the global state represent an illegal system state then the target algorithm is reset. rst

Formal Contracts for Derivation and Verification of Parallel Componentes

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento CientÃfico e TecnolÃgicoA aplicaÃÃo de nuvens computacionais para oferecer serviÃos de ComputaÃÃo de Alto Desempenho (CAD) à um assunto bastante discutido no meio acadÃmico e industrial. Esta dissertaÃÃo està inserida no contexto do projeto de uma nuvem computacional para o desenvolvimento e execuÃÃo de aplicaÃÃes de CAD baseadas em componentes paralelos, doravante denominada nuvem de componentes. Um dos principais desafios na sua utilizaÃÃo consiste no suporte à programaÃÃo paralela, tarefa bastante suscetÃvel à erros, pois tais erros podem levar, ao longo do desenvolvimento, a problemas de sincronizaÃÃo de processos, que podem causar abortamento da execuÃÃo e a produÃÃo de dados incorretos, bem como a problemas relacionados ao uso ineficiente dos recursos computacionais. à importante que tais problemas sejam tratados no caso de aplicaÃÃes de longa duraÃÃo cujo respeito a um cronograma para obtenÃÃo de resultados à crÃtico, aplicaÃÃes estas bastante comuns no contexto de CAD. Uma possÃvel soluÃÃo para tais problemas consiste na verificaÃÃo do comportamento e das propriedades dos componentes na nuvem, antes que seja feita a sua execuÃÃo, tornando possÃvel que os usuÃrios dos componentes da nuvem saibam se um componente pode ser utilizado com seguranÃa em sua aplicaÃÃo. Nesse cenÃrio, o uso de mÃtodos formais surge como uma alternativa atraente. A contribuiÃÃo desta dissertaÃÃo consiste em um processo de derivaÃÃo e verificaÃÃo de propriedades de componentes na nuvem. Tal processo envolve a especificaÃÃo formal do comportamento dos componentes por meio de contratos descritos pela linguagem Circus. EntÃo, atravÃs de um processo de refinamento e traduÃÃo tendo como ponto de partida o contrato, chega-se à implementaÃÃo de um componente para execuÃÃo sobre uma plataforma de computaÃÃo paralela. AtravÃs desse processo, torna-se possÃvel oferecer garantias aos desenvolvedores em relaÃÃo ao comportamento dos componentes no contexto de suas aplicaÃÃes. Para a prova de conceito, o processo à aplicado sobre a especificaÃÃo "papel-e-caneta" de dois benchmarks do NAS Parallel Benchmarks, IS e CG, bastante difundidos na Ãrea de CAD.The use of cloud computing to offer High Performance Computing (HPC) services has been widely discussed in the academia and industry. In this respect, this dissertation is included in the context of designing a cloud computing platform for the development of component-based parallel computing applications, referred as cloud of components. Many important challenges about using the cloud of components relate to parallel programming, an error-prone task due to synchronization issues, which may lead to abortion and production of incorrect data during execution of applications, and the inefficient use of computational resources. These problems may be very relevant in the case of long running applications with tight timelines to obtain critical results, quite common in the context of HPC. One possible solution to these problems is the formal analysis of the behavior of the components of an application through the cloud services, before their execution. Thus, the users of the components may know if a component can be safely used in their application. In this scenario, formal methods becomes useful. In this dissertation, it is proposed a process for specification and derivation of parallel components implementation for the cloud of components. This process involves the formal specification of the components behavior through contracts described using the Circus formal specification language. Then, through a refinement and translation process, which takes the contract as a start point, one may produce an implementation of a component that may execute on a parallel computing platform. Through this process, it becomes possible to offer guarantees to developers about the components behavior in their applications. To validate the proposed idea, the process is applied to contracts that have been described based on two benchmarks belonging to the NAS Parallel Benchmarks, widely adopted in HPC for evaluate the performance of parallel programming and computing platforms