A thought experiment on Quantum Mechanics and Distributed Failure Detection
<|reference_start|>A thought experiment on Quantum Mechanics and Distributed Failure Detection: One of the biggest problems in current distributed systems is that presented by one machine attempting to determine the liveness of another in a timely manner. Unfortunately, the symptoms exhibited by a failed machine can also be the result of other causes, e.g., an overloaded machine or network which drops messages, making it impossible to detect a machine failure with cetainty until that machine recovers. This is a well understood problem and one which has led to a large body of research into failure suspectors: since it is not possible to detect a failure, the best one can do is suspect a failure and program accordingly. However, one machine's suspicions may not be the same as another's; therefore, these algorithms spend a considerable effort in ensuring a consistent view among all available machines of who is suspects of being failed. This paper describes a thought experiment on how quantum mechanics may be used to provide a failure detector that is guaranteed to give both accurate and instantaneous information about the liveness of machines, no matter the distances involved.<|reference_end|>
@article{little2003a,
    title={A thought experiment on Quantum Mechanics and Distributed Failure
  Detection},
    author={Mark C. Little},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0309026},
    year={2003},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={cs/0309026},
    primaryClass={cs.DC}
}