Doel vak

The main objective is to provide students with an algorithmic frame of
mind for solving fundamental problems in distributed computing. They
obtain insight into concurrency concepts, and are offered a bird's-eye
view on a wide range of algorithms for basic and important challenges in
distributed systems.

Characteristic of the course is that correctness arguments and
complexity calculations of distributed algorithms are provided in an
intuitive fashion and by means of examples and exercises.

Inhoud vak

The following topics are treated in the course: Logical clocks,
snapshots, graph traversal, termination detection, garbage collection,
deadlock detection, routing, election, minimal spanning trees, anonymous
networks, checkpointing, fault tolerance, failure detection, consensus,
mutual exclusion, self-stabilization, blockchains, database transactions

Onderwijsvorm

4 hours per week HC
4 hours per week WC

Toetsvorm

Written examen (plus a take-home exercise sheet that can provide up to
0.5 bonus point, if a passing mark for the written exam is achieved).

Literatuur

W.J. Fokkink. Distributed Algorithms: An Intuitive Approach (2nd ed).
MIT Press,
2018.

Doelgroep

mAI, mCS, mPDCS

Overige informatie

The homepage of the course is at http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tcs/da/

Aanbevolen voorkennis

Datastructures & Algorithms