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Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system

Communications of the ACM · 1978 · Vol. 21(7) · pp. 558–565

Leslie Lamport✉(Abt Global (United States))

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.

Distributed systems and fault tolerance Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques Cellular Automata and ApplicationsSynchronizingComputer scienceSynchronization (alternating current)Event (particle physics)Distributed computingClock synchronizationDistributed algorithmAlgorithmTheoretical computer scienceReal-time computing

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