Multiple Instance Resource Allocation in Distributed Computing Systems

A token-based distributed algorithm to perform the allocation of any one from a set of multiple instances of a shared resource type has been presented in this note. The number of messages generated by the algorithm per critical section execution for accessing a resource instance varies from 0 to 2(n - 1), where n is the number of nodes in the distributed system. An advantage of the algorithm presented here is that the upper bound on the number of messages generated per critical section execution is independent of the number of instances of the resource type covered by the algorithm. © 1994 Academic Press, Inc.