Contention Resolution Against an Adversarial Scheduler

with Michael A. Bender, Martín Farach-Colton, Pritom Kundu, John Kuszmaul, Margaret Kuszmaul, William Kuszmaul, and Jingxun Liang

SPAA 2027 (under review)

arXiv Version

We study contention resolution when an adversarial scheduler chooses which players may participate at each step. With a shared clock and shared randomness, players can achieve optimal \(\Theta(1/\log n)\) efficiency even against an adaptive scheduler. Without either form of shared state, efficiency is at most \(O(\log n/n)\).