Course syllabus

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Welcome to Distributed Systems 2020!

TDA596 (Chalmers), DIT240 (GU), 7.5 education credits, LP2 2020 / 2021

News

  • (Oct 10th) Course website for 2020 is online.
  • Totally sorry about  Monday the 2nd mishap! I had somehow messed up my calendar and had the course starting on Thursday the 5th instead of the 2nd!
  • Zoom Link for all lectures: https://chalmers.zoom.us/j/62494304058 Password: 270583

Motivation

Why should I take this class? What will I learn? In a nutshell, we will introduce and discuss the underlying concepts and mechanisms that drive today's distributed systems such as the Internet, data centers, etc.  The lectures will provide you with the required knowledge, and the labs give you a hands-on experience in developing distributed systems and exploring their real-world challenges. For more details, have a look at this (very short) overview presentation.

If you attend our first lecture, we will all play a game to discover the beauty of the subject at hand.

Information

Staff

The course is taught by two teachers:

  • Ahmed Ali-Eldin Hassan (Some day I will update my Chalmers Webpages, but not today :-), ahmed.hassan#at#chalmers.se)
    • Here is a little bit about myself: I am a new'ish assistant professor at the NS division. Joined the division after three years at UMass Amherst. Before that, I spent 6.5 years in Umeå in Northern Sweden, where I obtained my PhD. I am from Egypt originally, and I have lived in Sweden, India, Egypt, and the US....
  • Selected lectures:  Philippas Tsigas (www.cse.chalmers.se/~tsigas/,  tsigas#at#chalmers.se)

Responsible for the course is

  • Ahmed

Responsible for the labs is:

Course Representatives (randomly selected):

MPHPC             cten@student.chalmers.se                                                      Niklas Côté
MPIDE                   simondu@student.chalmers.se                           Simon Duchen
MPCSN                         erelin@student.chalmers.se                                                      Elin Eriksson
MPCSN                      neethuharindran@gmail.com                           Neethu Harindran
MPCSN                          filnyl@student.chalmers.se                                                      Filip Nylander
TKDAT                      skoldw@student.chalmers.se                           William Sköld

 

Your feedback is very important to us! As usual, we will use your feedback from the anonymous course evaluation and the feedback from the meetings with the course representatives to further improve the course. Additionally, your direct feedback is very welcome: please feel very invited to discuss the course and any suggestions you have with us personally.

Organization

While the class is done online, I would like this to be a fun class with as much  interaction and benefit as possible. There are many ways to teach this class, but here is a rough outline of what we will try this year.

  • All (theory) lectures by Ahmed will be recorded and uploaded to Chalmers play,  YoutTube, (any platform that the students prefer) before the date of the actual lecture. There will be two recorded lectures per week.
  • Students will be expected to watch the lectures on their own, either using the allocated lecture time, or some other time that they feel more comfortable with.
  • We will meet on Zoom every Monday during the normal lecture time , break out into smaller groups, and work on solving design/real problems.
  • I will be online during the other lecture times (when you are expected to be watching the videos) for anyone who would like to login, ask questions, or who would even feel like they would like to have  me explain the lecture the normal way.
  • We will aim to cover as much applications as possible, specially towards the end of the class. These lecture will be live, with either myself, or a guest lecturer presenting.

Course Book

Marten van Steen and Andrew S. Tanenbaum, "Distributed Systems", CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, ISBN-10: 1543057381, ISBN-13: 978-1543057386, Third edition (!). There might be different ISBN numbers for hard and soft cover etc. Digital copy: On the site of the authors, a digital copy is available (upon request) for free (note that we are using the third edition).

 

Written Exams

The written exam will be held on:

  • T12th of Jan 2021. Will be a take home exam.
  • Re-exam date(s): 08 Apr 2021 and 18 August 2021. Please double check and see the student portal for updates and details
  • Review of the exam corrections: TBA

The examination will be based on:

  • The course book, the lecture notes, the lectures, and homework/labs.
  • The exam will challenge you to design, think, and discuss what you have learnt.

Labs

Links to the labs and other info:

Each lab has a deadline for which it needs to be submitted as a group. You can (re)submit up to 3 times. After 3 attempts, the submission system opens again in each re-exam (if needed). 

Course summary:

Date Details Due