CS 425 / ECE 428 / CSE 424: Distributed Systems

Sayan Mitra
Lecturer
Email:mitras
Phone: 333-7824
Office: CSL 266

Jerry Chiang
Teaching Assistant
Email:chiang2
Office: CSL 443

Jason Haas
Teaching Assistant
Email:jjhaas2
Office: CSL 443

Spring 2009

Overview

The course focuses on basic concepts underlying design and implementation of distributed systems. It covers algorithms and lowerbounds for fundamental problems in distributed computation such as clock synchronization, mutual exclusion, routing, (graph) coloring, coordination, consensus, group communication, transactions, and replicated data management. These topics are discussed in the context of real-world systems such as databases, peer to peer networks, distributed file systems, distributed robotics, and sensor networks.

This is not a course on computer networking (e.g., routing protocols in the Internet). Programming assignments do however require you to write multithreaded networking code.

Syllabus (tentative)

Clock synchronization
Mutual Exclusion
Global Snapshot
Distributed graph algorithms: spanning tree, coloring
Coordination: Leader election, synchronizers
Consensus: Synchronous, asynchronous systems, with failure detectors
Convergence: Pattern formation
Transactions
Group communication
Replication
Distributed shared memory
Self-stabilizing systems
Peer to Peer networks
Sensor networks
Distributed file system