The CAP Theorem
A system spread across several machines can give you consistent answers, or always answer at all. The network makes you choose.
2000 (conjectured), 2002 (proved)23 min read
American and Singaporean computer science
Computer scientist working on distributed algorithms and fault tolerance, a professor at the National University of Singapore. As a doctoral student with Nancy Lynch at MIT he co-authored the 2002 paper that turned Brewer's CAP conjecture into a proved theorem by making its terms precise — and in doing so made clear how much narrower the theorem is than the slogan built on it.
A system spread across several machines can give you consistent answers, or always answer at all. The network makes you choose.
2000 (conjectured), 2002 (proved)23 min read