Principles of Distributed Computing (FS 2013)

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Distributed computing is essential in modern computing and communications systems. Examples are on the one hand large-scale networks such as the Internet, and on the other hand multiprocessors such as your new multi-core laptop. This course introduces the principles of distributed computing, emphasizing the fundamental issues underlying the design of distributed systems and networks: communication, coordination, fault-tolerance, locality, parallelism, self-organization, symmetry breaking, synchronization, uncertainty. We explore essential algorithmic ideas and lower bound techniques, basically the "pearls" of distributed computing. We will cover a fresh topic every week.

Course pre-requisites: Interest in algorithmic problems. (No particular course needed.)

Course language: English.

The exam will take place on August 7th from 9 am to 11 am.

Lecture by Yvonne-Anne Pignolet and Thomas Locher Wednesday 8.15-10.00 @ CAB G 51.

Exercises organized by Philipp Brandes, Wednesday 10.15-12.00 @ CAB G 52.

Testat. Your task is to create an exam question including a solution for one of the topics. See here for detailed information.
Note that this is your last chance to obtain the testat. You need it in order to participate in the exam.

Sample exams: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Please note that the topics covered in this course change from year to year and thus some of the questions in those exams are not covered this year.

You can take a look at your corrected exam on Wednesday, the 11th of September, and on Monday, the 16th of September. To do so, please visit our secretary Friederike Brütsch(office ETZ G88) on one of these days.

Lecture material

References

[peleg]	Distributed Computing: A Locality-Sensitive Approach David Peleg. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), 2000, ISBN 0-89871-464-8
[aw]	Distributed Computing: Fundamentals, Simulations and Advanced Topics Hagit Attiya, Jennifer Welch. McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0-07-709352 6
[hkpru]	Dissemination of Information in Communication Networks Juraj Hromkovic, Ralf Klasing, Andrzej Pelc, Peter Ruzicka, Walter Unger. Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 2005, ISBN 3-540-00846-2
[leighton]	Introduction to Parallel Algorithms and Architectures: Arrays, Trees, Hypercubes Frank Thomson Leighton. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1991, ISBN 1-55860-117-1
[clr]	Introduction to Algorithms Thomas Cormen, Charles Leiserson, Ronald Rivest. The MIT Press, 1998, ISBN 0-262-53091-0 oder 0-262-03141-8

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