Lecture Summary and Readings
ECE 526 Distributed Algorithms (Fall 2015)


Slides: Slides:
Lecture Date TopicsRequired Readings Other information
1 8/24/2015
  • Course handout. Course introduction.
  • Message passing and shared memory models. Synchrony and asynchrony. Fault models: Crash and Byzantine.
  • Fault-tolerant consensus.
Chapters 1 and 5 of textbook
Slides: Chapter 1, Consensus
Why the Chord Ring-Maintenance Protocol Is Not Correct, Pamela Zave
How to Make Chord Correct", Pamela Zave.
2 8/24/2015 Crash and Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus. Chapter 5
Slides: Consensus, Byzantine consensus
3 8/31/2015 Crash and Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus. Chapter 5
Sections 1, 2 and 3 of The Byzantine Generals Problems, Lamport, Shostak and Pease, 1982.
Slides: Consensus, Byzantine consensus
4 9/2/2015 Crash and Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus. Chapter 5
Sections 1, 2 and 3 of The Byzantine Generals Problems, Lamport, Shostak and Pease, 1982.
Slides: Consensus, Byzantine consensus
5 9/9/2015 Lecture cancelled.
6 9/14/2015 Causality: Happened-before, logical clocks, vector clocks. Chapter 6Causality, Clocks
7 9/16/2015 Causality: Consistent cuts. Clock synchronization. Chapter 6Causality, Clocks
8 9/21/2015 Distributed shared memory. Sections 9.1, 9.2, 9.3
Slides: DSM, fault-tolerant simulations,
9 9/23/2015 Fault-tolerant simulation of read/write objects: multi-reader, single-writer, multi-reader, multi-writer, atomic snapshot object. Chapter 10 Slides: DSM, fault-tolerant simulations,
10 9/28/2015 Fault-tolerant simulation of read/write objects: multi-reader, single-writer, multi-reader, multi-writer, atomic snapshot object. Chapter 10 Slides: DSM, fault-tolerant simulations
11 9/30/2015 Fault-tolerant simulation of read/write objects: multi-reader, multi-writer, atomic snapshot object.
Mutual exclusion in shared memory systems
Chapter 10
Pseudo-code for Mutex algorithms from Chapter 4
Slides: DSM, fault-tolerant simulations
Mutex slides 1, Mutex slides 2
12 10/5/2015 Impossibility of consensus in asynchronous systems with faults. Topological approach. Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process, Fischer, Lynch, Paterson, JACM, 1985
Examples from slide set 1 and set 2
slides for FLP from the web
13 10/7/2015 Topological approach. Computability in Distributed Computing: a Tutorial, Examples from slide set 1 and set 2
14 10/12/2015 Wait-free hierarchy Chapter 15 (up to and including Section 15.3.2). slides
15 10/14/2015 Wait-free hieararchy.
Iterative consensus
Readings on iterative consensus to be posted
16 10/19/2015 Mid-term exam (take-home). Only a short lecture.
17 10/21/2015 Iterative consensus.
18 10/26/2015 Iterative consensus. slides
19 10/28/2015 Iterative Byzantine consensus. Vector consensus. See readings above.
20 11/2/2015 Communication complexity of equality function computation (algorithm for 3-party equality). Sections 1,2,3,6 of Multiparty Equality Function Computation in Networks with Point-to-Point Links
21 11/4/2015 Induced matchings. Communication-efficient Byzantnie broadcast. Sections 1, 2 and 6 of Nearly complete graphs decomposable into large induced matchings and their applications
Sections 1 through 5 of Complexity of Multi-Value Byzantine Agreement
22 11/9/2015 Reliable broadcast. Asynchronous Byzantine consensus. Section 2.1 of Multidimensional Approximate Agreement in Byzantine Asynchronous Systems
Section 3 of Optimal Resilience Asynchronous Approximate Agreement
23 11/11/2015 Ben-Or's algorithm. Full link-reversal algorithm. Sections 1, 2, 3, 4 of Correctness Proof of Ben-Or's Randomized Consensus Algorithm
First 8 pages of notes from Prof. Soma Choudhuri
24 11/16/2015 No lecture (due to exam today)
25 11/18/2015 Full link reversal. First 8 pages of notes from Prof. Soma Choudhuri
26 11/30/2015 In-class Quiz.
Distributed optimization (NOT included for the final exam).
K-set consensus in asynchronous systems,
Approximate consensus in asynchronous shared memory.
Sections 16.1 and 16.2.1 slides
27 12/2/2015 Student presentations
make-up class 12/6/2015 (11:00 am, room 239 CSL)
28 12/7/2015 Student presentations
29 12/9/2015 Student presentations




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