Jini™ Specifications, The, Second Edition

A.8. Taking the Difference Seriously

Differences in latency, memory access, partial failure, and concurrency make merging of the computational models of local and distributed computing both unwise to attempt and unable to succeed. Merging the models by making local computing follow the model of distributed computing would require major changes in implementation languages (or in how those languages are used) and make local computing far more complex than is otherwise necessary. Merging the models by attempting to make distributed computing follow the model of local computing requires ignoring the different failure modes and basic indeterminacy inherent in distributed computing, leading to systems that are unreliable and incapable of scaling beyond ...