Phase Clocks for Transient Fault Repair

TL;DR

This paper introduces a self-stabilizing phase clock algorithm designed for asynchronous distributed systems with transient memory faults, enabling reliable timing of repair procedures after faults occur.

Contribution

It presents a novel phase clock algorithm tailored for transient fault models, with proven stabilization guarantees and compositional theorems for repair process timing.

Findings

Algorithm guarantees accuracy within O(k) time after k faults

The phase clock supports reasoning about distributed repair progress

The approach enhances fault-tolerant synchronization in asynchronous systems

Abstract

Phase clocks are synchronization tools that implement a form of logical time in distributed systems. For systems tolerating transient faults by self-repair of damaged data, phase clocks can enable reasoning about the progress of distributed repair procedures. This paper presents a phase clock algorithm suited to the model of transient memory faults in asynchronous systems with read/write registers. The algorithm is self-stabilizing and guarantees accuracy of phase clocks within O(k) time following an initial state that is k-faulty. Composition theorems show how the algorithm can be used for the timing of distributed procedures that repair system outputs.