CS372H Spring 2010 Homework 11

(Some of these problems will be reviewing prior concepts, to help you review for the final.)

Problem 1

In class, we discussed the fact that, if messages can be lost, it is impossible to devise an algorithm that guarantees that two nodes can agree to do the same thing at the same time (the two generals problem). However, weaker forms of agreement may be possible.

Suppose two nodes, A and B, communicate via messages and that the probability of receiving any message that is sent is P (0 < P < 1 ). You need not consider any other types of failures.

  1. Is it possible for A and B to agree with certainty to perform some action (but not necessarily perform it at the same time)? If not, explain why not. If so, describe a protocol that provides this guarantee.

  2. Is it possible for both nodes to agree to do the same thing at the same time with >99.99999% certainty (e.g. guarantee that there is less than a 0.0000 1% risk that one or both will fail to make the appointment)? If not, explain why not. If so, describe a protocol that provides this guarantee.

  3. Suppose that in addition to lost messages, either A or B may crash at any time and, once crashed, recover at some arbitrary time in the future. Is it possible for A and B to agree with certainty to perform some action (but not necessarily perform it at the same time)? If not, explain why not. If so, describe a protocol that provides this guarantee

Problem 2

A system uses multi-partition allocation with swapping. The size of main memory is 128K, and there are 4 programs running with sizes 64K, 64K, 32K, and 16K respectively. Each program runs for 50msec, and then requests an I/O operation that requires 20msec. A program can be swapped at the rate of 8Kbyte/20msec. Compute the CPU utilization under round-robin scheduling. Devise a better scheduling strategy and show it has a better utilization.

Problem 3

In problem two, compute the CPU utilization if we:
  1. replace the CPU by one that runs 10 times faster
  2. double the size of main memory

Problem 4

Alice P. Hacker is a Head Guru in MacroHard, a software company known for operating systems with very sorry quality. She suggested a trick to reduce the pressure on the swap space. Instead of swapping out pages that belong to code texts into the swap area, the operating system could just take away the memory frames. If the code page is needed later, it could be paged directly from its binary file. Her argument is that the operating system will save time by not storing the code page into the swap space, and will save space in the swap area. The code text exists on disk anyway, and could be fetched from there. Would you approve of this design? Why or why not?