John F. Sowa wrote:
> Synchronization does depend on time, and it is much harder to
> implement. If you have systems that are separated by a distance
> that is large compared to the systems themselves, they will
> naturally run asynchronously.
>
I am not quite sure what you mean by 'asynchronously' here. I would
think that whether two systems run asynchronously or synchronously is
less dependent on the distance between them as compared to their sizes
(and what would you mean by that, precisely?), but whether they
communicate and need to wait for each other's responses to perform their
tasks. You can have a system on the Moon which must synchronize with a
system on Earth, and a two processes that run completely independently
(and asynchronously) on a single multiprocessor machine. (Actually, one
processor is enough for asynchronous computing, as concurrency does not
require parallelism). (01)
The Oxford Dic of Computing (not that I love this one), says:
"asynchronous: invloving or requiring a form of computer control timing
protocol in which a specific operation is begun upon receipt of an
indication (signal) that the preceding operation has been completed, and
which indicates to a subsequent operation when it may begin." (02)
With sufficiently fast and broad connections, or little demand for
real-time computation, small but distant systems can quite successfully
run in a synchronous manner. (03)
vQ (04)
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