Distributed computing background Sample Clauses

Distributed computing background. Distributed computing began as the study of networks of processors, in which each processor had limited local knowledge. However, much of the distributed computing literature now speaks in terms of systems of processes, not processors, to emphasize that the algorithms or bounds obtained from the theorem apply to any appropriate collection of discrete processes, whether they are part of the same multicore chip, or spread across a sensor network. One of the most-studied distributed computing models is the asynchronous shared memory model, in which processes are modeled as finite state machines that can read and write to one or more shared memory locations called registers. The model is asynchronous because there is no restriction on when a process will execute its next computation step, except that any nonfaulty B C B A B C B A A C (i) (ii) A B C B C A D C A B C B (iv) (v) Fig. 1. A toy example of tile self-assembly. In (i) a seed tile is placed on a surface. The dashed sides indicate glue strength zero, and the double-lined sides indicate glue strength two. In (ii) a tile binds to the east of the seed tile, since the glue strengths and names of the two tiles are complementary. in (iii) a tile binds to the north of the seed tile for the same reason. Note that steps (ii) and (iii) could have occurred in reverse order; this is an example of the nondeterminism of self-assembly. In