Lecture: Distributed Systems
Basic Information
- Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Lin Wang
- Semester: WS
- Level: Bachelor
- Credits: 6 ECTS
Content
Distributed systems are everywhere in our daily lives, powering the services we use without us even noticing. From cloud platforms like Google Drive and Apple iCloud, to social networks such as Instagram and TikTok, to cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and even AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, all rely on collections of interconnected machines working together as one system. This course will introduce you to the concepts and principles in building distributed systems. The lecture will be accompanied by exercise sessions for homework assignments.
Specifically, we will cover the following topics in this course:
- Communication: remote procedure call (RPC), multicast
- Clocks: clock synchronization, logical clocks
- Global state and snapshots
- Peer-to-peer systems and distributed hash table
- Replication: primary-backup and replicated state machine
- Consistency models: eventual consistency, linearizability, strong consistency
- Fault tolerance: Paxos, Raft, Byzantine fault tolerance
Learning Goals
After taking this course, you will be able to
- Explain the basic concepts and principles of distributed systems (Knowledge and understanding)
- Apply protocol details and properties to derive distributed system properties (Applying knowledge and understanding)
- Explain the advantages and limitations of today’s popular distributed systems (Making judgements)
- Demonstrate proficiency in systems programming by implementing distributed system protocols (Applying knowledge and understanding)
Assessment
The course goals will be assessed by a final written exam (100% of the final grade). Throughout the course, there will be non-graded exercises to help with the preparation for the exam.
Textbooks
- Standard textbooks: Distributed Systems (4th edition, Van Steen, Tanenbaum)
Prerequisites
Since this is a third-year BSc course, it is expected that you already have knowledge about computer organization, computer networks, and operating systems.