Leaders Election Without a Conflict Resolution Rule - Fast and Efficient Randomized Simulations among CRCW PRAMs

ID
TR-91-21
Authors
Joseph Gil and Yossi Matias
Publishing date
October 1991
Length
26 pages
Abstract

We study the question of fast leaders election on TOLERANT, a CRCW PRAM model which tolerates concurrent write but does not support symmetry breaking. We give a randomized simulation of MAXIMUM (a very strong CRCW PRAM) on TOLERANT. The simulation is optimal, reliable, and runs in nearly doubly logarithmic time and linear space. This is the first simulation which is fast, optimal and space-efficient, and therefore grants true comparison of algorithms running on different CRCW PRAMs. Moreover, it implies that the memory to which concurrent read or concurrent write are assumed should never be more than linear-the rest of the memory can always be addressed under the EREW convention. The techniques presented in this paper tackle fundamental difficulties in the design of fast parallel algorithms.