"If we assume that there is a single global state that each process talks to; if we assume that operations on that state take place atomically, without stepping

"If we assume that there is a single global state that each process talks to; if we assume that operations on that state take place atomically, without stepping on each other’s toes; then we can rule out a great many histories indeed. We know that each operation appears to take effect atomically at some point between its invocation and completion. We call this consistency model linearizability; because although operations are concurrent, and take time, there is some place–or the appearance of a place–where every operation happens in a nice linear order." --- cited from https://aphyr.com/posts/313-strong-consistency-models https://aphyr.com/posts/313-strong-consistency-models