Hardware-Coordinated Resource Ownership Transfer for Race-Free Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
In distributed systems, managing resource ownership efficiently to prevent race conditions and data corruption while minimizing latency is challenging due to the need for entities to share resources without duplicating functionality.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus for transferring common resource ownership in distributed systems by updating the source entity's ownership table and sending a MOVE command to the destination entity, ensuring atomicity and thread safety through coordinated updates across entities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If entities share common resources in distributed systems to avoid duplicating functionality, then resource utilization efficiency is improved, but race conditions and data corruption may occur due to concurrent access
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by requiring entities to acquire ownership of common resources before accessing them. The ownership table is updated in advance to record which entity currently owns each resource, preventing concurrent access conflicts. This preliminary establishment of ownership rules ensures that only one entity can access a resource at a time, thereby maintaining data integrity while allowing efficient resource sharing.
2Reliability
If ownership transfer of common resources is implemented to manage access control, then data corruption is prevented, but system latency increases due to coordination overhead
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the ownership transfer operation with the resource access operation into a single atomic transaction. When an entity needs to access a common resource, it atomically acquires ownership and performs the access in one uninterruptible step. This merging eliminates the need for separate ownership transfer and access steps, reducing coordination overhead and system latency while maintaining data integrity through the atomic nature of the combined operation.
3Reliability
If atomic updates of ownership tables are enforced across all entities, then race conditions are eliminated, but device complexity increases due to synchronization requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service by enabling each entity to independently manage its own view of resource ownership through local ownership tables. Entities update their own tables atomically when acquiring or releasing resources, without requiring complex centralized synchronization mechanisms. This self-service approach eliminates race conditions through local atomic operations while keeping the overall system complexity manageable, as each entity operates independently based on its local state.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are directed to methods and apparatus for transferring ownership of common resources from a source entity, which owns a resource, to a destination entity, which will own the resource, in a distributed system. The method includes the source entity receiving a command to change ownership (the MOVE command), and then marking the source entity as no longer owning the common resource. The source entity then sends a MOVE command to the destination entity, which will then update its common resource ownership table to reflect that the ownership of the common resource has been transferred from the source entity to the destination entity. It is advantageous that the updating of ownership of the common resource in the source entity occur simultaneously with the dispatching of the MOVE command to the destination entity.