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Inspired by distributed applications that use consensus or other agreement protocols for global coordination, we define a new computational model for parameterized systems that is based on a general global synchronization primitive and allows for global transition guards. Our model generalizes many existing models in the literature, including broadcast protocols and guarded protocols. We show that reachability properties are decidable for systems without guards, and give sufficient conditions under which they remain decidable in the presence of guards. Furthermore, we investigate cutoffs for reachability properties and provide sufficient conditions for small cutoffs in a number of cases that are inspired by our target applications 

Replication is a common technique to build reliable and scalable systems. Traditional strong consistency maintains the same total order of operations across replicas. This total order is the source of multiple desirable consistency properties: integrity, convergence and recency. However, maintaining the total order has proven to inhibit availability and performance. Weaker notions exhibit responsiveness and scalability; however, they forfeit the total order and hence its favorable properties. This project revives these properties with as little coordination as possible. It presents a tool called 𝐻𝑎𝑚𝑝𝑎 that given a sequential object with the declaration of its integrity and recency requirements, automatically synthesizes a correct-by-construction replicated object that simultaneously guarantees the three properties. It features a relational object specification language and a syntax-directed analysis that infers optimum staleness bounds. Further, it defines coordination-avoidance conditions and the operational semantics of replicated systems that provably guarantees the three properties. It characterizes the computational power and presents a protocol for recency-aware objects. 𝐻𝑎𝑚𝑝𝑎 uses automatic solvers statically and embeds them in the runtime to dynamically decide the validity of coordination-avoidance conditions. The experiments show that recency-aware objects reduce coordination and response time.