(Theory of) Distributed Systems
Graduate Course - Summer Term 2020
Fabian Kuhn
Course description
The course provides an introduction to the fundamentals of distributed systems and algorithms. The course will in particular cover the following topics:
- distributed systems models
- time and global states in distributed systems
- sychronous and asynchronous systems
- fault tolerance
- basic distributed algorithms for coordination and agreement tasks
- basic distributed network algorithms
- distributed and parallel graph algorithms
- impossibility results and lower bounds
Lectures and Exercises
- Lecture: Monday 14:15 - 16:00
- Exercise Tutorial: Wednesday 12:15 - 14:00
The course consists of 12 weekly 2-hour lectures and there will be 11 or 12 weekly exercise sheets. Lectures and exercise tutorials will be held online by using the video conferencing system zoom. The link on how to access the zoom meetings is available on the lecture online access information page, which is only visible from within the university network (i.e., use VPN to access the page from home). The online lectures will be recorded. The recordings will be available on the same page. To discuss questions and other issues related to the course, we have also created a slack channel for the course. Details are also on the lecture online access information page.
The first lecture will be on Monday, May 11 (at 14:15), the first exercise tutorial will be Wednesday, May 20 (at 12:15). In the first week, we will use the slot on Wednesday, May 13 at 12:15 for a short question and answer session. The last lecture of the course will be on Monday, July 27 and the last exercise tutorial on Wednesday, July 29.
Lecture Material
All material regarding the lecture (literature, slides, recordings, etc.) are available on the
of the course. In order to limit access to this material, this page is only visible from within the university network (i.e., use VPN to access the page from home).
Exercise Sheets
If you want feedback to your solutions, you can submit them either to alkida.balliu at cs.uni-freiburg.de or dennis.olivetti at cs.uni-freiburg.de.
| Week | Assigned Date | Due Date | Exercises | Sample Solution | |
| 1 | 11.05.2020 | 17.05.2020 | Exercise 01 | ||
| 2 | 18.05.2020 | 24.05.2020 | Exercise 02 | ||
| 3 | 25.05.2020 | 31.05.2020 | Exercise 03 | ||
| 4 | 2.06.2020 | 7.06.2020 | Exercise 04 | ||
| 5 | 8.06.2020 | 14.06.2020 | Exercise 05 | ||
| 6 | 15.06.2020 | 21.06.2020 | Exercise 06 | ||
| 7 | 22.06.2020 | 28.06.2020 | Exercise 07 | ||
| 8 | 29.06.2020 | 05.07.2020 | Exercise 08 | ||
| 9 | 06.07.2020 | 12.07.2020 | Exercise 09 | ||
| 10 | 13.07.2020 | 19.07.2020 | Exercise 10 | ||
| 11 | 20.07.2020 | 26.07.2020 | Exercise 11 | ||
| 12 | 27.07.2020 | 02.08.2020 | Exercise 12 | ||
Literature
Some of the content is for example covered by the following books:
Distributed Computing: Fundamentals, Simulations and Advanced Topics
Hagit Attiya, Jennifer Welch.
McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0-07-709352 6
Distributed Computing: A Locality-Sensitive Approach
David Peleg.
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), 2000, ISBN 0-89871-464-8
Additional literature for each chapter will be provided where available.