I need some clarification over the following quotation of Leslie Lamport:
A distributed system can be described as a particular sequential state machine that is implemented with a network of processors. The ability to totally order the input requests leads immediately to an algorithm to implement an arbitrary state machine by a network of processors, and hence to implement any distributed system.
I see how a distributed system can be modeled as the product of several particular sequential state machines.
I understand that by totally ordering input requests, one can duplicate a given sequential state machine over several computers, and make sure that all input requests are processed in the same order at every computer, and thus ensuring that the individual local states are coherent.
What I don't understand is how this mechanism is sufficient to implement ANY distributed system. At least it's sufficient to duplicate a sequential state machine, but isn't that a very particular case of a distributed system?