Bilkent University - Computer Engineering Department

CS 442: Distributed Systems and Algorithms
Fall 2023

[Moodle] [STARS Syllabus][Project] [References]
Course materials are posted in Moodle.

Course Description

Fundamentals of distributed systems and algorithms. Theoretical aspects, such as proving program properties, time synchronization, logical clocks, distributed global snapshots, mutual exclusion, consensus, and fault-tolerance. Practical aspects, such as remote procedure calls (RPC), distributed objects, message passing interface (MPI), distributed shared memory (DSM), tuple spaces, distributed file systems such as NFS, web-based systems (DNS, web caching, and content distribution networks (CDNs), map-reduce systems, key/value stores, BSP (bulk-synchronous processing) style computation, and peer-to-peer systems.
Credit units: 3. ECTS Credit units: 5.
Prerequisites: CS342.

Textbooks

Distributed Systems, Maarten Van Steen and Andrew Tanenbaum, 4th edition, Version 2023. (available online).
Introduction to Distributed Systems, Paul Sivilotti, 2007. (available online)

Instructor

Dr. Ibrahim Korpeoglu
Email: korpe AT cs.bilkent.edu.tr; Office: EA401; Phone: x2599
Lecture Hours: Tue 13:30-15:20; Fri 08:30-10:20. Classroom: EB-204.
Spare hour is announced in STARS.

Teaching Assistants

Syed Asad Shah. Email: asad.shah@bilkent.edu.tr.

Graders

Umut Cihan. Email: umut.cihan@bilkent.edu.tr.

Topics (tentative - unsorted)

Introduction to distributed systems.
Distributed system architectures.
Processes, threads, virtualization, clients and servers.
Communication. Protocols. RPC. Messaging. MPI. Multicasting.
Naming in distributed systems. Naming approaches. P2P Systems.
Basic distributed message passing algorithms.
Program representation and correctness.
Clock syncronization. Logical clocks. Vector clocks.
Distributed snapshots.
Mutual exlusion algorithms.
Total and causal ordered Multicasting.
Leader election algorithms.
Replication and Consistency.
Fault tolerance and Consensus.
Distributed consensus algorithms.

Grading Policy (tentative - may change with announcement)

Attendance and/or pop-quizzes: 5%
Project(s): 25%.
Homework(s): 10%.
Midterm: 25%. Closed book and notes.
Final exam: 35%. Will cover all topics. Closed book and notes.
Note that passing the course without taking a midterm exam or final exam is not possible.
You should expect a makeup exam to be more difficult, since you have more time to study.
Grades are posted to the SAPS system.

Project Information

A term project will be done. Information about the term project can be found here.

Exam Information

Dec 22 (Fri), 2023 - Jan 6, 2024 (Sat): Final exam period.
Jan 11, 2024 (Thu): Submission and announcements of grades (17:30).

Midterm Exam: November 8, 2023. Classroom: EAZ-01.
Final Exam: January 2, 20224, 18:00. Classroom: EAZ01.

Academic Calendar (Fall 2023)

Academic Honesty

Plagiarism is defined as the action of using or copying someone else's idea or work and pretending that you thought of it, or created it. Bilkent University requires that you be aware of the concept and dangers of plagiarism. In order to conform to international academic standards, you must respect the individual thoughts, ideas, and expressions of other authors in sources. In the exams, home-works, and projects in this course, occurrences of plagiarism will be seriously dealt with, leading to punishment through disciplinary procedures which call for a term or two terms of dispelling from the university.