Analyzing linearizability violations in the presence of read-modify-write operations

Abstract

We consider an algorithmic problem related to analyzing consistency anomalies in distributed storage systems. Specifically, given a history of read, write, and read-modify-write operations applied by clients, we quantify how far the history deviates from the “gold standard” of linearizability (Herlihy and Wing, 1990). Our solution generalizes a known algorithm that considers reads and writes only.