Principles of Distributed Computing (FS 2016)

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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.

Lecture by Roger Wattenhofer Wednesday 8.15-10.00 @ CAB G 51.

Exercises organized by Philipp Brandes, Exercise A: Wednesday 10.15-12.00 @ CAB G 52, Exercise B: Wednesday 13:15-15:00 @ LFW C 11

Reading Assignment. A reading assignment (TSP and Graph exploration) will be part of of the exam.

In case you have missed a lecture, the Sections 5.3 and 7.2 were discussed very briefly in the lecture. We skipped Algorithm 6.7 and Theorem 6.8 of Section 6.2. Keep this in mind when preparing for the exam.

If you are not in Zurich for the exam, please contact Prof. Wattenhofer via e-mail to get the confirmation you need to apply for a distance exam. The examination office will help you with any question you might have.

Sample exams: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 (including a sample solution)
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.

There will be a Q&A session in CAB G 51 on August 12 at 2pm. Please send your questions until August 10 (11:59pm) to Philipp Brandes.

You can take a look at your corrected exam on Monday, the 19th of September (from 9am to 12pm), and on Thursday, the 29th of September (from 12pm to 3pm). The exam review will take place in the office of our secretary Friederike Brütsch (office ETZ G88).

Lecture material

References

These books are available at CS text book collection.

[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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