Time and Synchronization

This 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.

Download the lecture notes as a PowerPoint file (you can easily print handout views using PowerPoint, or just use these).

Reading

Intensive reading: 11.1 - 11.3

Exercises

Primary set: 11.1 - 11.6, 11.9

Secondary set: 11.7 - 11.8