Wait-free Solvability of Colorless Tasks in Anonymous Shared-memory Model

We investigate the fault-tolerant capability of distributed systems in anonymous and unreliable settings. In the anonymous model, processes have no identifiers and execute an identical code. The present paper assumes that processes are prone to crash failures and communicate via multi-writer/multi-reader shared registers. We study the wait-free solvability of colorless tasks in the anonymous model. Especially, we propose an anonymous full-information protocol for colorless tasks and give a topological characterization of colorless tasks that are wait-free solvable in the anonymous model. The characterization implies that the anonymity does not reduce the computational power of the asynchronous shared-memory model as long as colorless tasks are concerned. We also show that some of the existing topological arguments on the eponymous model apply to the anonymous one.

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