Knowledge and Common Knowledge in a Distributed Environment-英文文献.pdf

Knowledge and Common Knowledge in a Distributed Environment Joseph Y Halp ern Yoram Moses IBM Almaden Research Center Department of Applied Mathematics San Jose CA The Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot ISRAEL Abstract Reasoning ab out knowledge seems to play a fundamental role in distributed systems Indeed such reasoning is a central part of the informal intuitive arguments used in the design of distributed proto cols Communication in a distributed system can b e viewed as the act of transforming the systems state of knowledge This pap er presents a general framework for formalizing and reasoning ab out knowledge in distributed sys tems We argue that states of knowledge of groups of pro cessors are useful concepts for the design and analysis of distributed proto cols In particular distributed know ledge corresp onds to knowledge that is distributed among the memb ers of the group while common know ledge corresp onds to a fact b eing publicly known The relationship b e tween common knowledge and a variety of desirable actions in a distributed system is illustrated Furthermore it is shown that formally sp eaking in practical systems com mon knowledge cannot b e attained A numb er of weaker variants of common knowledge that are attainable in many cases of interest are intro duced and investigated  This is a revised and expanded version of a pap er with the same title that rst app eared in the Proceedings of the rd ACM Conference on Principles of Distributed Computing It is essentially identical to the version that app ears in Journal of the ACM 37