Voting mechanisms in distributed systems

It is shown how voting mechanisms can be exploited to improve the reliability of decisions in a distributed system. A model of decision making in which several processors (nodes) are assigned to work independently on various aspects of a problem and each returns a binary answer to a coordinator node is assumed. The coordinator combines the answers, using a voting mechanism to arrive at a final answer. Two issues are addressed: (1) if the reliability of each node is known, then by assigning suitable votes to the various nodes it is possible to maximize the probability of a correct decision by the coordinator; and (2) if a cost vs. reliability function for each node is known, then it is possible to determine a best operating point for each node so as to minimize the total cost of the computation. Algorithms for minimizing the cost were designed and tested, and conditions under which savings can be realized were identified