Distributed Computing Pearls (Synthesis Lectures on Distributed Computing Theory)

Computers and computer networks are one of the most incredible inventions of the 20th century, having an ever-expanding role in our daily lives by enabling complex human activities in areas such as entertainment, education, and commerce. One of the most challenging problems in computer science for the 21st century is to improve the design of distributed systems where computing devices have to work together as a team to achieve common goals.

In this book, I have tried to gently introduce the general reader to some of the most fundamental issues and classical results of computer science underlying the design of algorithms for distributed systems, so that the reader can get a feel of the nature of this exciting and fascinating field called distributed computing. The book will appeal to the educated layperson and requires no computer-related background. I strongly suspect that also most computer-knowledgeable readers will be able to learn something new.

Gadi Taubenfeld is a professor and past dean of the School of Computer Science at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. He is an established authority in the area of concurrent and distributed computing and has published widely in leading journals and conferences. He authored the book Synchronization Algorithms and Concurrent Programming, published by Pearson Education. His primary research interests are in concurrent and distributed computing. Gadi was the head of the computer science division at Israels Open University; member of technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories; consultant to AT&T Labs-Research; and a research scientist and lecturer at Yale University. Gadi served as the program committee chair of PODC 2013 and DISC 2008 and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.