Lecture 3
The third lecture is devoted to the topic of time and clocks. We discuss physical time, and how we may synchronise clocks both with an external time source (such as an atomic clock) or internally among the processes in a distributed system. Time is very important in many real-world applications, and one major obstacle in distributed systems is the absence of global time. We can, however, make approximations that are "good enough" using algorithms covered in class.
The outline for the lecture is as follows:
- Introduction
- Clocks, events, and process states
- Synchronising physical clocks
No lecture notes this time!
Reading
Intensive reading: 11.1 - 11.3
Exercises
Primary set: 11.1 - 11.6, 11.9
Secondary set: 11.7 - 11.8