@inproceedings{182b71f1923340a39476fc6853038754,
title = "On the mailbox problem",
abstract = "The Mailbox Problem was described and solved by Aguilera, Gafni, and Lamport in [2] with a mailbox algorithm that uses two flag registers that carry 14 values each. An interesting question that they ask is whether leaner solutions exists. In addition to their algorithm, the authors of [2] proved that the mailbox problem cannot be solved with 1 bit flags. In this paper, we show that 2 bit flags suffice by presenting a mailbox algorithm with two bit flags. The space complexity of Aguilera et al. solution is O(n log n) and they conjectured that a solution with space complexity O(log n) exists. Our algorithm proves this conjecture. We also prove that there is no mailbox algorithm with a smaller space complexity.",
keywords = "Distributed algorithms, Linearizability, Shared memory, Synchronization",
author = "Uri Abraham and Gal Amram",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.; 18th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2014 ; Conference date: 16-12-2014 Through 19-12-2014",
year = "2014",
month = jan,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1007/978-3-319-14472-6_30",
language = "English",
series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)",
publisher = "Springer Verlag",
pages = "453--468",
editor = "Aguilera, {Marcos K.} and Leonardo Querzoni and Marc Shapiro",
booktitle = "Principles of Distributed Systems - 18th International Conference, OPODIS 2014, Proceedings",
address = "Germany",
}