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Related papers: Population Protocols Are Fast

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The population protocol model was introduced by Angluin \emph{et al.} as a model of passively mobile anonymous finite-state agents. This model computes a predicate on the multiset of their inputs via interactions by pairs. The original…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2016-02-12 Olivier Bournez , Johanne Cohen , Mikaël Rabie

This paper revisits a fundamental distributed computing problem in the population protocol model. Provided $n$ agents each starting with an input color in $[k]$, the relative majority problem asks to find the predominant color. In the…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Tom-Lukas Breitkopf , Julien Dallot , Antoine El-Hayek , Stefan Schmid

We propose a mathematical framework for natural selection in finite populations. Traditionally, many of the selection-based processes used to describe cultural and genetic evolution (such as imitation and birth-death models) have been…

Populations and Evolution · Quantitative Biology 2015-11-18 Alex McAvoy

In the stochastic population protocol model, we are given a connected graph with $n$ nodes, and in every time step, a scheduler samples an edge of the graph uniformly at random and the nodes connected by this edge interact. A fundamental…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2023-12-22 Dan Alistarh , Joel Rybicki , Sasha Voitovych

Population protocols have been introduced by Angluin et al. as a model of networks consisting of very limited mobile agents that interact in pairs but with no control over their own movement. A collection of anonymous agents, modeled by…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2011-09-22 Olivier Bournez , Jérémie Chalopin , Johanne Cohen , Xavier Koegler , Mikael Rabie

We study uniform population protocols: networks of anonymous agents whose pairwise interactions are chosen at random, where each agent uses an identical transition algorithm that does not depend on the population size $n$. Many existing…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-07-30 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari

Infinite population models are important tools for studying population dynamics of evolutionary algorithms. They describe how the distributions of populations change between consecutive generations. In general, infinite population models…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2015-09-29 Bo Song , Victor O. K. Li

We study population protocols: networks of anonymous agents that interact under a scheduler that picks pairs of agents uniformly at random. The _size counting problem_ is that of calculating the exact number $n$ of agents in the population,…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2018-05-15 David Doty , Mahsa Eftekhari , Othon Michail , Paul G. Spirakis , Michail Theofilatos

We consider the standard population protocol model, where (a priori) indistinguishable and anonymous agents interact in pairs according to uniformly random scheduling. The self-stabilizing leader election problem requires the protocol to…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2021-11-30 Janna Burman , Ho-Lin Chen , Hsueh-Ping Chen , David Doty , Thomas Nowak , Eric Severson , Chuan Xu

We study large-scale distributed cooperative systems that use optimistic replication. We represent a system as a graph of actions (operations) connected by edges that reify semantic constraints between actions. Constraint types include…

Databases · Computer Science 2007-10-08 Pierre Sutra , Marc Shapiro , João Pedro Barreto

The population control problem is a parameterised problem where a controller sends messages to a whole population of identical finite-state agents, aiming to eventually move them all into a target state. The decision problem asks whether…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-11 Hugo Gimbert , Corto Mascle , Patrick Totzke

The population protocol model is a computational model for passive mobile agents. We address the leader election problem, which determines a unique leader on arbitrary communication graphs starting from any configuration. Unfortunately,…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-11-10 Haruki Kanaya , Ryota Eguchi , Taisho Sasada , Michiko Inoue

We revisit the majority problem in the population protocol communication model, as first studied by Angluin et al. (Distributed Computing 2008). We consider a more general version of this problem known as plurality consensus, which has…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-05-06 Antoine El-Hayek , Robert Elsässer , Stefan Schmid

Computing with synthetically engineered bacteria is a vibrant and active field with numerous applications in bio-production, bio-sensing, and medicine. Motivated by the lack of robustness and by resource limitation inside single cells,…

We consider \emph{plurality consensus} in a network of $n$ nodes. Initially, each node has one of $k$ opinions. The nodes execute a (randomized) distributed protocol to agree on the plurality opinion (the opinion initially supported by the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2016-02-04 Petra Berenbrink , Tom Friedetzky , Peter Kling , Frederik Mallmann-Trenn , Chris Wastell

In this paper, the leader election problem in the population protocol model is considered. A leader election protocol with logarithmic stabilization time is given. Given a rough knowledge m of the population size n such that m >= \log_2 n…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-07-01 Yuichi Sudo , Fukuhito Ooshita , Taisuke Izumi , Hirotsugu Kakugawa , Toshimitsu Masuzawa

Population protocols are a well established model of computation by anonymous, identical finite state agents. A protocol is well-specified if from every initial configuration, all fair executions reach a common consensus. The central…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2018-07-31 Michael Blondin , Javier Esparza , Stefan Jaax , Philipp J. Meyer

We present a silent, self-stabilizing ranking protocol for the population protocol model of distributed computing, where agents interact in randomly chosen pairs to solve a common task. We are given $n$ anonymous agents, and the goal is to…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2025-04-15 Petra Berenbrink , Robert Elsässer , Thorsten Götte , Lukas Hintze , Dominik Kaaser

We consider a solution of automata similar to Population Protocols and Network Constructors. The automata (or nodes) move passively in a well-mixed solution and can cooperate by interacting in pairs. Every such interaction may result in an…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2015-04-01 Othon Michail

In this work, we study the following basic question: "How much parallelism does a distributed task permit?" Our definition of parallelism (or symmetry) here is not in terms of speed, but in terms of identical roles that processes have at…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2016-08-19 Othon Michail , Paul G. Spirakis