Fully Anonymous Shared Memory Algorithms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fully anonymous shared memory model where both processes and memory are anonymous, demonstrating solutions for key problems like mutual exclusion and consensus even with complete anonymity and process failures.

Contribution

It presents the first solutions for fundamental problems in a fully anonymous system where both processes and memory are anonymous.

Findings

Mutual exclusion can be solved in a failure-free anonymous system.

Consensus and set agreement are solvable despite process crashes.

The model extends understanding of anonymity in distributed computing.

Abstract

Process anonymity has been studied for a long time. Memory anonymity is more recent. In an anonymous memory system, there is no a priori agreement among the processes on the names of the shared registers they access. This article introduces the fully anonymous model, namely a model in which both the processes and the memory are anonymous. It is shown that fundamental problems such as mutual exclusion, consensus, and its weak version called set agreement, can be solved despite full anonymity, the first in a failure-free system, the others in the presence of any number of process crashes.