Interactive animation of fault tolerant parallel algorithms

Animation of algorithms makes understanding them intuitively easier. This paper describes the software tool Raft (Robust Animator of Fault Tolerant Algorithms) which allows the user to animate a number of fault tolerant parallel algorithms which achieve fault tolerant execution. The novelty of the system is that the interface allows the user to create new on-line fault-injecting adversaries as the algorithm executes. The various algorithms animated adapt to this interactive input in order to ensure fault-tolerance. The system has an extensive user interface which allows a choice of the number of processors, the number of parallel tasks, and the adversary to control the processor failures