Asynchronous PRAMs are (almost) as good as synchronous PRAMs

A PRAM (parallel random-access-machine) model that allows processors to have arbitrary asynchronous behavior is introduced. The main result shows that any n-processor CRCW (concurrent-read, concurrent-write) PRAM program can be simulated on an asynchronous CRCW PRAM using O(n) expected work per parallel step and up to n/log n log*n asynchronous processors. It is shown that a synchronization primitive for n parallel instructions can be computed using O(n) expected work by a system of asynchronous processors. Since a special case of asynchronous behavior is a fail-stop error, the simulation technique described above can convert any PRAM program into a PRAM program that is resistant to all fail-stop errors and has the same expected work as the original program.<<ETX>>

[1]  Alfred V. Aho,et al.  The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms , 1974 .

[2]  Uzi Vishkin,et al.  A Parallel-Design Distributed-Implementation (PDDI) General-Purpose Computer , 2011, Theor. Comput. Sci..

[3]  Barry W. Johnson.  Design & analysis of fault tolerant digital systems , 1988 .

[4]  Richard M. Karp,et al.  A Survey of Parallel Algorithms for Shared-Memory Machines , 1988 .

[5]  Alexander A. Shvartsman,et al.  Efficient parallel algorithms can be made robust , 1989, PODC '89.

[6]  Phillip B. Gibbons.  A more practical PRAM model , 1989, SPAA '89.

[7]  Alok Aggarwal,et al.  On communication latency in PRAM computations , 1989, SPAA '89.

[8]  Richard Cole,et al.  The APRAM: incorporating asynchrony into the PRAM model , 1989, SPAA '89.

[9]  Leslie G. Valiant,et al.  General Purpose Parallel Architectures , 1991, Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, Volume A: Algorithms and Complexity.

[10]  James Aspnes,et al.  Time-and space-efficient randomized consensus , 1990, PODC '90.

[11]  Naomi Nishimura,et al.  Asynchronous shared memory parallel computation , 1990, SPAA '90.

[12]  Richard Cole,et al.  The expected advantage of asynchrony , 1990, SPAA '90.

[13]  Charles U. Martel,et al.  Asynchronous PRAM Algorithms for List Ranking and Transitive Closure , 1990, ICPP.

[14]  Michael J. Fischer,et al.  The wakeup problem , 1990, STOC '90.

[15]  R. Ramaswami,et al.  Book Review: Design and Analysis of Fault-Tolerant Digital Systems , 1990 .

[16]  Nancy A. Lynch,et al.  Are wait-free algorithms fast? , 1990, Proceedings [1990] 31st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science.

[17]  Larry Rudolph,et al.  A Complexity Theory of Efficient Parallel Algorithms , 1990, Theor. Comput. Sci..

[18]  Paul G. Spirakis,et al.  Efficient robust parallel computations , 2018, STOC '90.

[19]  Alexander A. Shvartsman.  Achieving Optimal CRCW PRAM Fault-Tolerance , 1991, Inf. Process. Lett..