Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system
The work
| Title | Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system |
|---|---|
| Authors | Leslie Lamport |
| Type | article |
| Year | 1978 |
| Citekey | lamport1978time |
Where it appeared
| Published in | Communications of the ACM |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 558--565 |
Identifiers
| DOI | 10.1145/359545.359563 |
|---|---|
| OpenAlex | W3137220996 |
Access
| Landing page | https://doi.org/10.1145/359545.359563 |
|---|---|
| Free full text | https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/359545.359563 |
Abstract
The concept of one event happening before another in a distributed system is examined, and is shown to define a partial ordering of the events. A distributed algorithm is given for synchronizing a system of logical clocks which can be used to totally order the events. The use of the total ordering is illustrated with a method for solving synchronization problems. The algorithm is then specialized for synchronizing physical clocks, and a bound is derived on how far out of synchrony the clocks can become.
Copy held
| Kind | PDF, 854.6 kB |
|---|---|
| Retrieved | 2026-08-06 |
| Held | local, for personal reference |
| Where it came from | https://doi.org/10.1145/359545.359563 |
Where this came from
| How it got here | the agent went looking · found via openalex |
|---|---|
| First seen | 2026-08-04 |
| Standing | endorsed |
| Approved | 2026-08-06 |
Cite it as
@article{lamport1978time,
title = {Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system},
author = {Leslie Lamport},
year = {1978},
journal = {Communications of the ACM},
volume = {21},
number = {7},
pages = {558--565},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
doi = {10.1145/359545.359563},
url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/359545.359563},
}
This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/lamport1978time/ and will keep doing so.