M
Michael Whittaker
mwhittaker.github.io · Personal blog · on HN since 2018
Michael Whittaker is a distributed systems researcher who publishes papers and posts on Paxos variants and consensus.
What HN saysCommenters recommend his papers on compartmentalized consensus, bipartisan Paxos, and distributed debugging, and praise his illustrated CAP theorem proof.
16HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
10stories submitted
643story points
1 year agolast shared
2018people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1An illustrated proof of the CAP theorem (2018)3 people · 478 points · first shared 2018 · 83 comments on HN
- 2Compartmentalized consensus.pdf3 people · first shared 2020
- 3Debugging Distributed Systems With Why-Across-Time Provenance [pdf]2 people · 43 points · first shared 2018 · 3 comments on HN
- 4Scaling Replicated State Machines with Compartmentalization [pdf]2 people · 28 points · first shared 2021 · 6 comments on HN
- 5Matchmaker paxos.pdf2 people · first shared 2020
- 6Two Generals and Time Machines1 people · 81 points · first shared 2018 · 66 comments on HN
- 7Scaling Replicated State Machines with Compartmentalization1 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 8Quoracle: Read-Write Quorum Systems Made Practical1 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 9Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types1 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 10Ocaml Lists in Rust1 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 11Vive La Différence: Practical Diff Testing of Stateful Applications [pdf]1 people · 1 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 12Bipartisan paxos.pdf1 people · first shared 2020
What HN people wrote when they linked it
judofyr · 2020-04-28
That's a great article! Thanks a lot. I know about some more variants you might want to check out:
- Compartmentalized Paxos (https://mwhittaker.github.io/publications/compartmentalized_consensus.… shows how you can compartamentalize the various roles of a Paxos node to increase scalability.
- Matchmaker Paxos (https://mwhittaker.github.io/publications/matchmaker_paxos.pdf) introduces a separate set of nodes called matchmakers which are used during reconfiguration.
- PigPaxos (https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.07760) places the nodes into relay groups and revises the communication pattern to improve scalability. This seems very similar to Compartmentalized Paxos.
- Linearizable Quorum Reads in Paxos (https://www.usenix.org/system/files/hotstorage19-paper-charapko.pdf) shows how you can do linearizable quorum reads in Paxos.
ryanworl · 2021-11-04
https://mwhittaker.github.io/publications/compartmentalized_paxos.pdf
This is both recent enough that you've probably not seen it and extremely relevant to what you're interested in!
ryanmarsh · 2020-09-12
I found this paper helpful “Debugging Distributed Systems with Why-Across-Time Provenance”
https://mwhittaker.github.io/publications/wat_SOCC18.pdf
zinclozenge · 2020-03-18
Interesting that there is another Paxos variant that was published to arxiv around february called BipartisanPaxos https://mwhittaker.github.io/publications/bipartisan_paxos.pdf. It too aims at removing bottlenecks.
hadronzoo · 2020-03-18
Is this a similar concept to compartmentalized consensus? https://mwhittaker.github.io/publications/compartmentalized_consensus.…
logophobia · 2018-07-13
It was proven in 2002, has a formal definition, so I'm going with calling it a theorem. Maybe this'll help: https://mwhittaker.github.io/blog/an_illustrated_proof_of_the_cap_theo… ?
hardwaresofton · 2021-05-05
Shameless plug for my list of paxos variants out there:
https://vadosware.io/post/paxosmon-gotta-concensus-them-all
Unfortunately there are a few I'm missing and I haven't had time to update that post or make a new one -- I haven't had time to read these and try to fit them in the narrative:
- Compartmentalized Paxos (https://mwhittaker.github.io/publications/compartmentalized_consensus.…
- Matchmaker Paxos (https://mwhittaker.github.io/publications/matchmaker_paxos.pdf)
- PigPaxos (https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.07760)
- Lineraizable Quorum reads in Paxos (https://www.usenix.org/system/files/hotstorage19-paper-charapko.pdf)