Concurrent Crash-Prone Shared Memory Systems. A Few Theoretical Notions

Theory is what remains true when technology is changing. So, it is important to know and master the concepts and the theoretical tools that underlie the design of the systems we are using today and systems we will use tomorrow. This means that, given a computing model, we need to know what can done and what cannot be done in that model. Considering systems built on top of an asynchronous read write shared memory prone to process crashes, this monograph presents and develops the fundamen notions that are universal constructions, consensus numbers, distributed recursivity, power of the simulation, and what can be done when one has to cope with process anonymity and/or me anonymity.
Numerous distributed algorithms are presented, the aim of which is being to help the rea , better understand the power and the subtleties of the notions that are presented. In addition, the reader can appreciate the simplicity and beauty of some of these algorithms.