Time Synchronization

in
Distributed Systems
Guide to Synchronization Lectures
• Synchronization in shared memory systems

• Event ordering in distributed systems

– Logical time, logical clocks, time stamps,
 Introduction
• Synchronization in centralized systems is
primarily accomplished through shared
memory
– Event ordering is clear because all events are
timed by the same clock
• Synchronization in distributed systems is
harder
– No shared memory
– No common clock
 Clock Synchronization
• Some applications rely on event ordering
to be successful
– Event ordering is easier if you can accurately
time-stamp events, but in a distributed system
the clocks may not always be synchronized

• Is it possible to synchronize clocks in a

distributed system?
 Physical Clocks
• Physical clock example: counter + holding
register + oscillating quartz crystal
– The counter is decremented at each oscillation
– Counter interrupts when it reaches zero
– Reloads from the holding register
– Interrupt = clock tick (often 60 times/second)
• Software clock: counts interrupts
– This value represents number of seconds since some
predetermined time (Jan 1, 1970 for UNIX systems;
beginning of the Gregorian calendar for Microsoft)
– Can be converted to normal clock times
 Clock Skew

• In a distributed system each computer has

its own clock
• Each crystal will oscillate at slightly
different rate.
• Over time, the software clock values on
the different computers are no longer the
same.
 Clock Skew

• Clock skew(offset): the difference between

the times on two different clocks
• Clock drift : the difference between a clock
and actual time
• Ordinary quartz clocks drift by ~ 1sec in
11-12 days. (10-6 secs/sec)
• High precision quartz clocks drift rate is
somewhat better
 Various Ways of Measuring Time*
• The sun
– Mean solar second – gradually getting longer as
earth’s rotation slows.
• International Atomic Time (TAI)
– Atomic clocks are based on transitions of the cesium
atom
– Atomic second = value of solar second at some fixed
time (no longer accurate)
• Universal Coordinated Time (UTC)
– Based on TAI seconds, but more accurately reflects
sun time (inserts leap seconds to synchronize atomic
second with solar second)
Getting the Correct (UTC) Time*
• WWV radio station or similar stations in
other countries (accurate to +/- 10 msec)
• UTC services provided by earth satellites
(accurate to .5 msec)
• GPS (Global Positioning System)
(accurate to 20-35 nanoseconds)
Clock Synchronization Algorithms*
• In a distributed system one machine may
have a WWV receiver and some technique
is used to keep all the other machines in
synch with this value.
• Or, no machine has access to an external
time source and some technique is used
to keep all machines synchronized with
each other, if not with “real” time.
 Clock Synchronization Algorithms
• Network Time Protocol (NTP):
– Objective: to keep all clocks in a system synchronized to
UTC time (1-50 msec accuracy) – not so good in WAN
– Uses a hierarchy of passive time servers
• The Berkeley Algorithm:
– Objective: to keep all clocks in a system synchronized to
each other (internal synchronization)
– Uses active time servers that poll machines periodically
• Reference broadcast synchronization (RBS)
– Objective: to keep all clocks in a wireless system
synchronized to each other
 Three Philosophies of Clock
Synchronization
• Try to keep all clocks synchronized to
“real” time as closely as possible
• Try to keep all clocks synchronized to
each other, even if they vary somewhat
from UTC time
• Try to synchronize enough so that
interacting processes can agree upon an
event order.
– Refer to these “clocks” as logical clocks
 6.2 Logical Clocks
• Observation: if two processes (running on
separate processors) do not interact, it
doesn’t matter if their clocks are not
synchronized.
• Observation: When processes do interact,
they are usually interested in event order,
instead of exact event time.
• Conclusion: Logical clocks are sufficient
for many applications
 Formalization
• The distributed system consists of n
processes, p1, p2, …pn (e.g, a MPI group)
• Each pi executes on a separate processor
• No shared memory
• Each pi has a state si
• Process execution: a sequence of events
– Changes to the local state
– Message Send or Receive
 Two Versions
• Lamport’s logical clocks: synchronizes
logical clocks
– Can be used to determine an absolute
ordering among a set of events although the
order doesn’t necessarily reflect causal
relations between events.
• Vector clocks: can capture the causal
relationships between events.
 Lamport’s Logical Time
• Lamport defined a “happens-before”
relation between events in a process.
• "Events" are defined by the application. The
granularity may be as coarse as a
procedure or as fine-grained as a single
instruction.
Happened Before Relation (a → b)
• a → b: (page 244-245)
– in the same [sequential] process,
– send, receive in different processes,
(messages)
– transitivity: if a → b and b → c, then a → c
• If a → b, then a and b are causally related;
i.e., event a potentially has a causal effect
on event b.
 Concurrent Events
• Happens-before defines a partial order of
events in a distributed system.
• Some events can’t be placed in the order
• a and b are concurrent (a || b) if
!(a → b) and !(b → a).
• If a and b aren’t connected by the
happened-before relation, there’s no way
one could affect the other.
 Logical Clocks
• Needed: method to assign a “timestamp” to
event a (call it C(a)), even in the absence of a
global clock
• The method must guarantee that the clocks
have certain properties, in order to reflect the
definition of happens-before.
• Define a clock (event counter), Ci, at each
process (processor) Pi.
• When an event a occurs, its timestamp ts(a) =
C(a), the local clock value at the time the event
takes place.
 Correctness Conditions
• If a and b are in the same process, and
a → b then C (a) < C (b)
• If a is the event of sending a message
from Pi, and b is the event of receiving the
message by Pj, then Ci (a) < Cj (b).
• The value of C must be increasing (time
doesn’t go backward).
– Corollary: any clock corrections must be
made by adding a positive number to a time.
 Implementation Rules
• Between any two successive events a & b in
Pi, increment the local clock (Ci = Ci + 1)
– thus Ci(b) = Ci(a) + 1
• When a message m is sent from Pi, set its
time-stamp tsm to Ci, the time of the send
event after following previous step.
• When the message is received at Pj the local
time must be greater than tsm . The rule is
(Cj = max{Cj, tsm} + 1).
 Lamport’s Logical Clocks (2)
Event a: P1 sends m1
to P2 at t = 6,
Event b: P2 receives
m1 at t = 16.
If C(a) is the time m1
was sent, and C(b) is
the time m1 is
received, do C(a) and
C(b) satisfy the
correctness conditions
?

Figure 6-9. (a) Three processes, each with its own clock.
The clocks “run” at different rates.
 Lamport’s Logical Clocks (3)
Event c: P3
sends m3 to
P2 at t = 60
Event d: P2
receives m3
at t = 56
Do C(c) and
C(d) satisfy
the
conditions?

Figure 6-9. (b) Lamport’s algorithm corrects the clocks.

 Application Layer

Application sends message mi Deliver mi to application

Adjust local clock,

Timestamp mi Adjust local clock

Middleware layer

Middleware sends Message mi is received

message

Network Layer

Figure 6-10. The positioning of Lamport’s logical clocks in distributed systems

Handling clock management as a middleware operation
Figure 5.3 (Advanced Operating Systems,Singhal and Shivaratri)
How Lamport’s logical clocks advance

e11 e12 e13 e14 e15 e16 e17

P1

P2 e21 e22 e23 e24 e25

Which events are causally related?

Which events are concurrent?
eij represents event j
on processor i
 A Total Ordering Rule
(does not guarantee causality)
• A total ordering of events can be obtained
if we ensure that no two events happen at
the same time (have the same timestamp).
• Why? So all processors can agree on an
unambiguous order.
• How? Attach process number to low-order
end of time, separated by decimal point;
e.g., event at time 40 at process P1 is
40.1,event at time 40 at process P2 is 40.2
Figure 5.3 - Singhal and Shivaratri

e11 e12 e13 e14 e15 e16 e17

P1

P2 e21 e22 e23 e24 e25

What is the total ordering of the events in these

two processes?
Example: Total Order Multicast
• Consider a banking database, replicated
across several sites.
• Queries are processed at the
geographically closest replica
• We need to be able to guarantee that DB
updates are seen in the same order
everywhere
 Totally Ordered Multicast
Update 1: Process 1 at Site A adds $100 to an
account, (initial value = $1000)
Update 2: Process 2 at Site B increments the
account by 1%
Without synchronization,
it’s possible that
replica 1 = $1111,
replica 2 = $1110
• Message 1: add $100.00
Message 2: increment account by 1%
• The replica that sees the messages in the
order m1, m2 will have a final balance of
$1111
• The replica that sees the messages in the
order m2, m1 will have a final balance of
$1110
 The Problem
• Site 1 has final account balance of $1,111
after both transactions complete and Site 2
has final balance of $1,100.
• Which is “right”? Either, from the standpoint
of consistency.
• Problem: lack of consistency.
– Both values should be the same
• Solution: make sure both sites see/process
all messages in the same order.
 Implementing Total Order
• Assumptions:
– Updates are multicast to all sites, including
(conceptually) the sender
– All messages from a single sender arrive in
the order in which they were sent
– No messages are lost
– Messages are time-stamped with Lamport
clock values.
 Implementation
• When a process receives a message, put
it in a local message queue, ordered by
timestamp.
• Multicast an acknowledgement to all sites
• Each ack has a timestamp larger than the
timestamp on the message it
acknowledges
• The message queue at each site will
eventually be in the same order
 Implementation
• Deliver a message to the application only when
the following conditions are true:
– The message is at the head of the queue
– The message has been acknowledged by all other
receivers. This guarantees that no update messages
with earlier timestamps are still in transit.
• Acknowledgements are deleted when the
message they acknowledge is processed.
• Since all queues have the same order, all sites
process the messages in the same order.
 Causality
• Causally related events:
– Event a may causally affect event b if a → b
– Events a and b are causally related if either
a → b or b → a.
– If neither of the above relations hold, then
there is no causal relation between a & b. We
say that a || b (a and b are concurrent)
 Vector Clock Rationale
• Lamport clocks limitation:
– If (a→b) then C(a) < C(b) but
– If C(a) < C(b) then we only know that either
(a→b) or (a || b), i.e., b a
• In other words, you cannot look at the clock
values of events on two different processors
and decide which one “happens before”.
• Lamport clocks do not capture causality
 Lamport’s Logical Clocks (3)
Suppose we add a message to the
m2 ’ scenario in Fig. 6.12(b).
• Tsnd(m1) < Tsnd(m3’).
(6) < (32)
• Does this mean
m3 ’
send(m1) → send(m3’)?
But …
• Tsnd(m1) < Tsnd(m2’).
(6) < (20)
• Does this mean
send(m1) → send(m2)?

Figure 6-12.
Figure 5.4
Time

Space
e11 e12
P1 .(1) (2)

P2 e21 e22
(1) (3)

e31 e32 e33

P3
(1) (2) (3)

C(e11) < C(e22) and C(e11) < C(e32) but while e11 → e22, we cannot say
e11 → e32 since there is no causal path connecting them. So, with
Lamport clocks we can guarantee that if C(a) < C(b) then
b a , but by looking at the clock values alone we cannot say
whether or not the events are causally related.
Vector Clocks – How They Work
• Each processor keeps a vector of values,
instead of a single value.
• Ci is the clock at process Pi; it has a component
for each process in the system.
– Ci[i] corresponds to Pi‘s local “time”.
– Ci[j] represents Pi‘s knowledge of the “time” at
Pj (the # of events that Pi knows have
occurred at Pj
• Each processor knows its own “time” exactly,
and updates the values of other processors’
clocks based on timestamps received in
messages.
 Implementation Rules
• IR1: Clock Ci is incremented between any two
successive events in Process Pi
Ci[i]=Ci[i]+d (d>0)
• IR2: If the event a is the sending of the message m
by process Pi, then message m is assigned a
vector timestamp tm=Ci[a]; on receiving the
message m by process Pj, Cj is updated as follows:
for all k, Cj[k]=max(Cj[k],tm[k])
• On receiving a message, a process learnt about the
more recent clock value of the rest of the processes
in the system.
 Review
• Physical clocks: hard to keep synchronized
• Logical clocks: can provide some notion of
relative event occurrence
• Lamport’s logical time
– happened-before relation defines causal relations
– logical clocks – don’t capture causality
– total ordering relation
– use in establishing totally ordered multicast
• Vector clocks
– Unlike Lamport clocks, vector clocks capture causality
– Have a component for each process in the system
Figure 5.5. Singhal and Shivaratri

P1 (1, 0 , 0) (2, 0, 0) (3, 0, 0) (4, 5, 2)

e11 e12 e13 e14

(0, 1, 0) (2, 2, 0) (2, 3, 1) (2,4,2) (2, 5, 2)

P2
e21 e22 e23 e24 e25

(0, 0, 1) (0, 0, 2) (0, 0, 3)

P3
e31 e32 e33

Vector clock values. In a 3- process system, VC(Pi) = vc1, vc2, vc3

 Establishing Causal Order

• When Pi sends a message m to Pj, Pj knows

– How many events occurred at Pi before m was sent
– How many relevant events occurred at other sites before
m was sent (relevant = “happened-before”)
• In Figure 5.5, VC(e24) = (2, 4, 2). Two events in P1
and two events in P3 “happened before” e24.
– Even though P1 and P3 may have executed other events,
they don’t have a causal effect on e24.
Happened Before/Causally Related
Events - Vector Clock Definition
• a → b iff ts(a) < ts(b)
(a happens before b iff the timestamp of a is less
than the timestamp of b)
• Events a and b are causally related if
– ts(a) < ts(b) or
– ts(b) < ts(a)
• Otherwise, we say the events are concurrent.
• Any pair of events that satisfy the vector clock
definition of happens-before will also satisfy the
Lamport definition, and vice-versa.
 Comparing Vector Timestamps
• Less than: ts(a) < ts(b) iff at least one
component of ts(a) is strictly less than the
corresponding component of ts(b) and all
other components of ts(a) are either less
than or equal to the corresponding
component in ts(b).
• (3,3,5) ≤ (3,4,5), (3, 3, 3) ═ (3, 3, 3),
(3,3,5) ≥ (3,2,4), (3, 3 ,5) | | (4,2,5).
Figure 5.4
Time

e11 e12
P1 (2, 0, 0)
(1, 0, 0)

P2 e21 e22
(0, 1, 0) (2, 2, 0)

e31 e32 e33

P3
(0, 0,1) (0, 0, 2) (0, 0, 3)

ts(e11) = (1, 0, 0) and ts(e32) = (0, 0, 2), which shows that the
two events are concurrent.
ts(e11) = (1, 0, 0) and ts(e22) = (2, 2, 0), which shows that
e11 e22
 Causal Ordering of Messages
An Application of Vector Clocks
• Premise: Deliver a message only if
messages that causally precede it have
already been received
– i.e., if send(m1) → send(m2), then it should be
true that receive(m1) → receive(m2) at each
site.
– If messages are not related (send(m1) ||
send(m2)), delivery order is not of interest.