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Logic Clock

Logical clocks are a mechanism for capturing chronological and causal relationships in distributed systems without a global clock. Leslie Lamport first proposed using logical clocks, called Lamport timestamps, in 1978. Lamport timestamps assign increasing integer values to events at each process to define a partial ordering. The algorithm follows simple rules where each process increments its counter before events and messages include the counter value. Lamport timestamps can be used to implement totally ordered multicast across distributed processes to ensure consistent ordering of concurrent updates.

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321 views3 pages

Logic Clock

Logical clocks are a mechanism for capturing chronological and causal relationships in distributed systems without a global clock. Leslie Lamport first proposed using logical clocks, called Lamport timestamps, in 1978. Lamport timestamps assign increasing integer values to events at each process to define a partial ordering. The algorithm follows simple rules where each process increments its counter before events and messages include the counter value. Lamport timestamps can be used to implement totally ordered multicast across distributed processes to ensure consistent ordering of concurrent updates.

Uploaded by

sampathabo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Logical clock:

Is a mechanism for capturing chronological and causal relationships in a distributed


system. Distributed systems may have no physically synchronous global clock, so a
logical clock allows global ordering on events from different processes in such systems.
The first implementation, the Lamport timestamps, was proposed by Leslie Lamport in
1978.
Lamport's Logical Clocks:
The algorithm of Lamport timestamps is a simple algorithm used to determine the order
of events in a distributed computer system. As different nodes or processes will
typically not be perfectly synchronized, this algorithm is used to provide a partial
ordering of events with minimal overhead, and conceptually provide a starting point for
the more advanced vector clock method.
For synchronization of logical clocks, Lamport established a relation termed as
"happens-before" relation.

1. Happens- before relation is a transitive relation, therefore if p →→q and q→→r,


then p→→r.
2. If two events, a and b, occur in different processes which not at all exchange
messages amongst them, then a→→b is not true, but neither is b→→a which is
antisymmetry.

The algorithm follows some simple rules:

 A process increments its counter before each event in that process.


 When a process sends a message, it includes its counter value with the message.
 On receiving a message, the counter of the recipient is updated, if necessary, to
the greater of its current counter and the timestamp in the received message.
The counter is then incremented by 1 before the message is considered received.
Example how lamport synchronize clocks

Concurrent events in Lamport timestamps.


1. Totally Ordered Multicast
o We need to guarantee that concurrent updates on a replicated database
are seen in the same order everywhere. This requires a totally-ordered
multicast.
o Update 1:
add 100toanaccount(initialvalue=100toanaccount(initialvalue=1000)
o Update 2: add 1% interest to account.
o Lamport's logical clocks can be used to implement totally-ordered
multicast in a completely distributed fashion
o Lamport's logical clocks can be used to implement totally-ordered
multicast in a completely distributed fashion

1. Causality
 Lamport's logical clocks: If A →→ B then L(A) < L(B), Reverse is not true. Nothing
can be said about events by comparing timestamps.
 Need to capture causality: If A →→ B then A causally precedes B. Need a
timestamping mechanism such that: T(A) < T(B) if A causally precedes B

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