The computational complexity of the reliability problem on distributed systems

Abstract

The reliability of a distributed program in a distributed computing system is the probability that a program which runs on multiple processing elements and needs to communicate with other processing elements for remote data files will be executed successfully. This reliability varies according to (1) the topology of the distributed computing system, (2) the reliability of the communication links, (3) the data files and program distribution among processing elements, and (4) the data files required to execute a program. This paper shows that solving this reliability problem is NP-hard even when the distributed computing system is restricted to a series-parallel, a 2-tree, a tree, or a star structure. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.