English

Relaxation for Efficient Asynchronous Queues

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing 2025-03-05 v1

Abstract

We explore the problem of efficiently implementing shared data structures in an asynchronous computing environment. We start with a traditional FIFO queue, showing that full replication is possible with a delay of only a single round-trip message between invocation and response of each operation. This is optimal, or near-optimal, runtime for the Dequeue operation. We then consider ways to circumvent this limitation on performance. Though we cannot improve the worst-case time per operation instance, we show that relaxation, weakening the ordering guarantees of the Queue data type, allows most Dequeue instances to return after only local computation, giving a low amortized cost per instance. This performance is tunable, giving a customizable tradeoff between the ordering of data and the speed of access

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.02164,
  title  = {Relaxation for Efficient Asynchronous Queues},
  author = {Samuel Baldwin and Cole Hausman and Mohamed Bakr and Edward Talmage},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.02164},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

20 pages Short version to appear in SIROCCO '25