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Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system
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Communications of the ACM archive
Volume 21 ,  Issue 7  (July 1978) table of contents
Pages: 558 - 565  
Year of Publication: 1978
ISSN:0001-0782
Author
Leslie Lamport  Massachusetts Computer Associates, Inc.
Publisher
ACM  New York, NY, USA
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ABSTRACT

The concept of one event happening before another in a distributed system is examined, and is shown to define a partial ordering of the events. A distributed algorithm is given for synchronizing a system of logical clocks which can be used to totally order the events. The use of the total ordering is illustrated with a method for solving synchronization problems. The algorithm is then specialized for synchronizing physical clocks, and a bound is derived on how far out of synchrony the clocks can become.


REFERENCES

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

 
1
Schwartz, J.T. Relativity in lllustrations. New York U. Press, New York, 1962.
 
2
Taylor, E.F., and Wheeler, J.A. Space-Time Physics, W.H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1966.
 
3
Lamport, L. The implementation of reliable distributed multiprocess systems. To appear in Computer Networks.
 
4
Ellingson, C, and Kulpinski, R.J. Dissemination of system-time. 1EEE Trans. Comm. Com-23, 5 (May 1973), 605-624.

CITED BY  1,112