Shared Memory Synchronization in Presence of Failures: An Exercise-Based Introduction for the Sophomore

In the recent past, lots of papers have addressed synchronization in asynchronous shared memory systems prone to process crashes. Unfortunately, to date, nearly all these results have appeared only in theory-oriented journals and conferences, very few being presented and studied in textbooks. This aim of this paper is to give a flavor of a few of these fundamental results. To that end, it considers three problems and presents solutions proposed to solve them, emphasizing the basic concepts and techniques these solutions rely on. These problems have been selected because they address distinct facets of synchronization in presence of failures. So, the spirit of this introductory paper is mainly pedagogical (with an algorithmic taste).