CPSC 416 (Winter 2022 Term 2): Syllabus

CPSC 416 Winter 2022 Term 2, Department of Computer Science

Delivery: In Person, Tuesday and Thursday 8:00-9:30 am (Location TBA)

Course Dates: January 10, 2023 to April 13, 2023

Instructor Information

Tony Mason	Office:
	E-mail: fsgeek@cs.ubc.ca
In-person Office Hours by Appointment	Teaching Assistants: (TBA)
Online Office Hours:	Tuesday @ 13:00-14:00 via Zoom
	Thursday @ 16:00-17:00 on Discord

General Course Information

Description

A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn’t even know existed can render your own computer unusable. – Leslie Lamport (2013 ACM Turing Machine Award Winner)

This course covers fundamental concepts in distributed computing and how systems can be designed to use those concepts to enable distributed applications. Course objectives are: in-depth understanding of distributed computing concepts and practical techniques, how to build distributed systems using hands-on labs as well as optional projects, as well as an understanding of the current state of the art for several aspects of building distributed systems (Machine Learning, Data Analysis, and Byzantine Fault Tolerance, for example.)

Distributed systems provide substantial benefits that justify their use despite their complexity. Properly executed distributed system implementations are more fault tolerant since there are fewer (or no) single points of failure. In addition, distributed systems provide a highly useful technique for providing scalability, which in turn can improve their ability to handle more work – including brief periods of high demand work. Techniques such as caching provide strong benefits but introduce additional complexities due to the need to manage distributed state.

Distributed systems have complex failure modes that must be handled properly in order to provide the benefits of those same systems. Thus, much of this material is about handling failures in a fashion that permits forward progress, which is often different than typical programming involves.

The tentative topics are listed in the schedule below. For the most part this will be a lecture-style course. However, distributed system concepts are notoriously challenging to internalize without first-hand experience. The emphasis of this course, therefore, will be on building distributed system prototypes, small and large.

Prerequisites

CPSC 317 (Networks)

CPSC 313 (Computer Hardware and Operating Systems)

Textbooks

There are no required textbooks for this course. The following books are optional and may help your understanding of the materials.

1. TBD
2. TBD

Communications

TBA

Course Goals and Learning Objectives

Schedule

Note that this schedule is a work in progress and is subject to change.

Date	Topics	Deliverables
January 10, 2023	Introduction: Failure Readings: TBA	Course Collaboration Policy Quiz Due Monday January 16, 2023.
January 12, 2023	Networks and Remote Procedure Calls
January 17, 2023	Clocks, Time, and Event Ordering.
January 19, 2023	Distributed State	Project 1: Intro to DS Labs due Monday January 16, 2023.
January 23, 2023	Last Day to Drop
January 24, 2023	Achieving Consensus
January 26, 2023	Replication
January 31, 2023	Fault-Tolerance
February 2, 2023	Transactions	Project 2: Client-server due Sunday February 5, 2023.
February 7, 2023	Distributed Logging
February 9, 2023	Quorum Replication
February 14, 2023	PAXOS	Project 3: Primary-backup replication Due Monday February 13, 2023
February 16, 2023	Viewstamped Replication
February 21, 2023	Reading Break
February 23, 2023	Reading Break
February 28, 2023	Raft
March 2, 2023	PMMC Walk-through
March 7, 2023		Last Day to Withdraw (Extended)
March 7, 2023	Introduction to Formal Verification (TLA+)
March 9, 2023	Consistency and Geo-Distributed Data Stores
March 14, 2023	Guest Lecture
March 16, 2023	Project 5 Walk-through
March 21, 2023	Peer-to-Peer Systems and Mobility	Project 4: Paxos Due Monday, March 20, 2023
March 23, 2023	Distributed Data Analytics
March 28, 2023	Datacenter-based Distributed Computing
March 30, 2023	Distributed Machine Learning
April 4, 2023	Byzantine Fault Tolerance and Blockchain
April 6, 2023	Guest Lecture
April 11, 2023	Guest Lecture
April 13, 2023	TBA	Project 5: Sharded Fault-Tolerant Key-Value Store due Thursday April 13, 2023.
TBD	Final Exam

My goal is to have several guest speakers during the term. I have put time for four such guest lectures at the end of the schedule and will adjust the schedule as I am able to confirm specific dates with guests. If I am not able to get four guest speakers I will provide supplementary presentations in lieu of those guest speakers.