Today’s mainstream network timing models for distributed computing are synchrony, partial synchrony, and asynchrony. These models are coarse-grained and often make either too strong or too weak assumptions about the network. This paper introduces a new timing model called granular synchrony that models the network as a mixture of synchronous, partially synchronous, and asynchronous communication links. The new model is not only theoretically interesting but also more representative of real-world networks. It also serves as a unifying framework where current mainstream models are its special cases. We present necessary and sufficient conditions for solving crash and Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus in granular synchrony. Interestingly, consensus among n parties can be achieved against f ≥ n/2 crash faults or f ≥ n/3 Byzantine faults without resorting to full synchrony.
@InProceedings{giridharan_et_al:LIPIcs.DISC.2024.30, author = {Giridharan, Neil and Abraham, Ittai and Crooks, Natacha and Nayak, Kartik and Ren, Ling}, title = {{Granular Synchrony}}, booktitle = {38th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2024)}, pages = {30:1--30:22}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-95977-352-2}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2024}, volume = {319}, editor = {Alistarh, Dan}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2024.30}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-212566}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2024.30}, annote = {Keywords: Timing model, synchrony, asynchrony, consensus, blockchain, fault tolerance} }
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