A New Solution to Lamport's Concurrent Programming Problem Using Small Shared Variables

Abstract

Concurrent Small SharedA new solution to the concurrent programming control (mutual exclusion) problem that is immune to process failures and restarts is presented.The algorithm uses just four values of shared memory per process, which is within one value of the known lower bound.The algorithm is implemented using two binary variables that make it immune to read errors occurring during writes, that is, "flickering bits."