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project summary
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Instances of Schneider's generalized protocol of clock synchronization
| Title: |
Instances of Schneider's generalized protocol of clock
synchronization
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| Author: |
Damián Barsotti
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| Submission date: |
2006-03-15 |
| Abstract: |
F. B. Schneider ("Understanding protocols for Byzantine clock
synchronization") generalizes a number of protocols for Byzantine
fault-tolerant clock synchronization and presents a uniform proof
for their correctness. In Schneider's schema, each processor
maintains a local clock by periodically adjusting each value to one
computed by a convergence function applied to the readings of all
the clocks. Then, correctness of an algorithm, i.e. that the
readings of two clocks at any time are within a fixed bound of each
other, is based upon some conditions on the convergence function. To
prove that a particular clock synchronization algorithm is correct
it suffices to show that the convergence function used by the
algorithm meets Schneider's conditions.
Using the theorem prover Isabelle, we formalize the proofs that the
convergence functions of two algorithms, namely, the Interactive
Convergence Algorithm (ICA) of Lamport and Melliar-Smith and the
Fault-tolerant Midpoint algorithm of Lundelius-Lynch, meet
Schneider's conditions. Furthermore, we experiment on handling some
parts of the proofs with fully automatic tools like ICS and
CVC-lite.
These theories are part of a joint work with Alwen Tiu and Leonor
P. Nieto "Verification of Clock Synchronization Algorithms:
Experiments on a combination of deductive tools" in proceedings of
AVOCS 2005. In this
work the correctness of Schneider schema was also verified using
Isabelle (entry GenClock in AFP).
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