CheapBFT: Resource-efficient Byzantine Fault Tolerance

Kapitza R, Behl J, Cachin C, Distler T, Kuhnle S, Mohammadi SV, Schröder-Preikschat W, Stengel K (2012)

Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2012

Edited Volumes: EuroSys'12 - Proceedings of the EuroSys 2012 Conference

Pages Range: 295-308

Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings of the EuroSys 2012 Conference (EuroSys '12)

Event location: Bern

URI: http://www4.cs.fau.de/Publications/2012/kapitza_12_eurosys.pdf

DOI: 10.1145/2168836.2168866

Abstract

One of the main reasons why Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) systems are not widely used lies in their high resource consumption: 3f + 1 replicas are necessary to tolerate only f faults. Recent works have been able to reduce the minimum number of replicas to 2f + 1 by relying on a trusted subsystem that prevents a replica from making conflicting statements to other replicas without being detected. Nevertheless, having been designed with the focus on fault handling, these systems still employ a majority of replicas during normal-case operation for seemingly redundant work. Furthermore, the trusted subsystems available trade off performance for security; that is, they either achieve high throughput or they come with a small trusted computing base. This paper presents CheapBFT, a BFT system that, for the first time, tolerates that all but one of the replicas active in normal-case operation become faulty. CheapBFT runs a composite agreement protocol and exploits passive replication to save resources; in the absence of faults, it requires that only f + 1 replicas actively agree on client requests and execute them. In case of suspected faulty behavior, CheapBFT triggers a transition protocol that activates f extra passive replicas and brings all non-faulty replicas into a consistent state again. This approach, for example, allows the system to safely switch to another, more resilient agreement protocol. CheapBFT relies on an FPGA-based trusted subsystem for the authentication of protocol messages that provides high performance and comprises a small trusted computing base. © 2012 ACM.

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Involved external institutions

IBM Zurich Research Laboratory Switzerland (CH) Royal Institute of Technology / Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH) Sweden (SE)

How to cite

APA:

Kapitza, R., Behl, J., Cachin, C., Distler, T., Kuhnle, S., Mohammadi, S.V.,... Stengel, K. (2012). CheapBFT: Resource-efficient Byzantine Fault Tolerance. In Proceedings of the EuroSys 2012 Conference (EuroSys '12) (pp. 295-308). Bern.

MLA:

Kapitza, Rüdiger, et al. "CheapBFT: Resource-efficient Byzantine Fault Tolerance." Proceedings of the EuroSys 2012, Bern 2012. 295-308.

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