Academic Year 2024 - 2025
Question Bank
Year/Semester:III/ V Department :CSE Unit : I/II
Date:28/08/2025 Subject Code/Title :CS3551/Distributed Section : Part A/B/C
Computing
Faculty Name :N.Thamizhmozhi
UNIT I
INTRODUCTION
Introduction: Definition-Relation to Computer System Components – Motivation – Message -
Passing Systems versus Shared Memory Systems – Primitives for Distributed Communication
– Synchronous versus Asynchronous Executions – Design Issues and Challenges; A Model of
Distributed Computations: A Distributed Program – A Model of Distributed Executions –
Models of Communication Networks – Global State of a Distributed System.
PART – A (2 Marks)
1. What is a distributed system?
A distributed system is one in which components located at networked computers
communicate and coordinate their actions only by passing messages. The components interact
with each other in order to achieve a common goal.
2.What do you mean by message passing?
Message passing is a fundamental mechanism for communication in distributed systems. It
enables processes or nodes to exchange messages and coordinate their actions. There are
several types of message-passing models, including synchronous, asynchronous, and hybrid
approaches.
3.Define Distributed Program?
A computer program that runs within a distributed system is called a distributed program, and
distributed programming is the process of writing such programs.
4.What do you mean by synchronous and asynchronous execution?
Asynchronous is a non-blocking architecture, so the execution of one task isn't dependent on
another. Tasks can run simultaneously. Synchronous is a blocking architecture, so the
execution of each operation depends on completing the one before it. Each task requires an
answer before moving on to the next iteration.
5.List out the features of distributed systems?
No common clock
No shared memory
Performance. ...
Scalability. ...
High availability. ...
Data integrity. ...
High reliability. ...
Security. ...
User mobility.
6.Write down the principles of distributed systems?
Distributed file systems are an important part of any organization's data storage and access
needs. The design of the system should be based on the principles of scalability, availability,
reliability, performance, and security.
7.what are the primitives for distributed communication?
blocking/non-blocking and synchronous/
asynchronous primitives
Message send and message receive communication primitives are denoted Send() and
Receive(), respectively. A Send primitive has at least two parameters the destination, and the
buffer in the user space, containing the data to be sent. Similarly, a Receive primitive has at
least two parameters – the source from which the data is to be received (this could be a
wildcard), and the user buffer into which the data is to be received.
8.What are the significant consequences of distributed systems?
The components of a distributed system interact with one another in order to achieve a
common goal. Three significant challenges of distributed systems are: maintaining
concurrency of components, overcoming the lack of a global clock, and managing the
independent failure of components.
9. What are the challenges of distributed systems?
The main challenges of distributed system are:
Heterogeneity
Openness
Security
Scalability
Failure handling
Concurrency
Transparency
Quality of service
10. Define Transparency. What are its types?
Transparency is defined as the concealment from the user and the application programmer of
the separation of components in a distributed system, so that the system is perceived as a
whole rather than as a collection of independent components.
Its types are:
Access transparency
Location transparency
Concurrency transparency
Replication transparency
Failure transparency
Mobility transparency
Performance transparency
Scaling transparency
11.Define the model of distributed execution?
Casual Precedence Relation
Space Diagram for distributed execution
12.List any two resources of hardware and software, which can be shared in distributed
systems with examples
Five types of hardware resource and five types of data or software resource that can usually be
shared are printer,plotter,storage space,cd drive,dvd drive,processing power. For example
printer which takes graphics and texts from the computer and later it gets transferred into a
paper which is of standard size.
13.Differentiate between buffering and caching
Buffering is a process of temporarily holding data in memory or a buffer before writing it to a
permanent storage location. Caching is a process of temporarily storing data in memory for
quick access or retrieval. Cache stores copy of the data. Cache is in processor, and can be also
implemented with ram and disk.
14.Differentiate between synchronous and asynchronous execution?
Synchronous code executes one line of code after the other, while asynchronous code allows
multiple lines of code to run at the same time. Asynchronous code can be much more efficient
than synchronous code for certain types of programs, but it is also more complex and harder to
debug.
15.Define global state
The global state of a distributed system is a collection of the local states of the processes and
the channels. Notationally, the global state GS is defined as
denote the state of a channel Cij defined as follows:
16..Define Models of Communication network?
There are several models of the service provided by communication networks, namely, FIFO
(first-in, first-out), non-FIFO, and causal ordering. In the FIFO model, each channel acts as a
first-in first-out message queue and thus, message ordering is preserved by a channel
PART -B /C
1.Explain how a parallel system differs from a distributed system (May 2022, Mark-13)
2.Illustrate the difference between message passing and shared memory process
communication model, Give their advantages and disadvantages (Dec 2022, Mark-13)
3.Discuss the design issuses and challenges in distributed system from a system perspective.
(May 2022, Mark-13)
4. Explain in detail about various models of communication networks with necessary diagram
representation.
5. Discuss in detail about various models of process communication with necessary diagram
representation
6. How do you classify a parallel system? Explain.
7. What are the functions must be addressed while designing and building
a distributed system? Explain.
8. What are the significant factors affecting the interacting processes in
distributed systems? How the interaction model deals with the
difficulty of setting time limits in a distributed system? Explain.
UNIT II LOGICAL TIME AND GLOBAL STATE
Logical Time: Physical Clock Synchronization: NTP – A Framework for a System of Logical
Clocks – Scalar Time – Vector Time; Message Ordering and Group Communication: Message
Ordering Paradigms – Asynchronous Execution with Synchronous Communication –
Synchronous Program Order on Asynchronous System – Group Communication – Causal
Order – Total Order; Global State and Snapshot Recording Algorithms: Introduction – System
Model and Definitions – Snapshot Algorithms for FIFO Channels.
TWO MARKS – PART A
1. What are the issues in distributed system?
There is no global time in a distributed system, so the clocks on different computers do not
necessarily give the same time as one another. All communication between processes is
achieved by means of messages. Message communication over a computer network can be
affected by delays, can suffer from a variety of failures and is vulnerable to security attacks.
2.What is meant by group communication in distributed system?
Group Communication occurs when a single source process simultaneously
attempts to communicate with numerous functions. A group is an abstract collection of
interrelated operations. This abstraction hides the message passing such that the
communication seems to be a standard procedure call.
3.What is meant by asynchronous programming?
Asynchronous programming provides opportunities for a program to continue running other
code while waiting for a long -running task to complete.
4.Write application of casual order?
The causal ordering of messages describes the causal relationship between a message send
event and a message receive event. For example, if send(M1) -> send(M2) then every recipient
of both the messages M1 and M2 must receive the message M1 before receiving the message
M2.
5.What is synchronous order?
Synchronous execution means the first task in a program must finish processing before moving
on to executing the next task.
6.Define Scalar Time?
scalar time are independent (i.e., they are notcausally related), they can be ordered using any.
arbitrary criterion without violating the causality. relation . Therefore, a total order is
consistent with the. causality relation .
7.What is clock shew?
Clock skew (sometimes called timing skew) is a phenomenon in synchronous digital circuit
systems (such as computer systems) in which the same sourced clock signal arrives at different
components at different times due to gate or, in more advanced semiconductor technology,
wire signal propagation delay.
8.What is clock drift rate?
Clock Drift: As mentioned, no two clocks would have the same clock rate of oscillations i.e;
clock rate would be different. The difference of clock rate is called
clock drift.
9.What is clock tick?
Clock Tick: after a predefined number of oscillations, the timer will generate a clock tick. This
clock tick generates a hardware interrupt that causes the computer's operating system to enter a
special routine in which it can update the software clock and run the process scheduler.
10.What is logical Clock?
Logical Clocks refer to implementing a protocol on all machines within your distributed
system, so that the machines are able to maintain consistent ordering of events within some
virtual timespan. A logical clock is a mechanism for capturing chronological and causal
relationships in a distributed system.
11.What is global state of the distributed system?
The global state of a distributed system is the set of local states of each individual processes
involved in the system plus the state of the communication channels. Determinism.
Deterministic Computation.
12.Write the happen before relation?
Happened before relation is an irreflexive partial ordering on the set of all events happening in
the system i.e.; (a⇢ a) is not true for any event a. This relates back to Einstein’s general theory
of relativity where events are ordered in terms of messages that could possibly be sent.
13.What is vector clock?
Vector Clock is an algorithm that generates partial ordering of events and detects causality
violations in a distributed system.
14.What is chandy lamport algorithm?
Chandy and Lamport were the first to propose a algorithm to capture consistent global state of
a distributed system. The main idea behind proposed algorithm is that if we know that all
message that have been sent by one process have been received by another then we can record
the global state of the system.
Part -B/C
1.Explain about Message ordering paradigms ( May 2022, Dec 2022 , Mark-13)
2.Explain the types of Group communication used in distributed system
( Dec 2022 , Mark-13)
3.Elucidate on the total and casual order in distributed system with a neat diagram
( Dec 2022, Mark- 13)
4.Explain about Chandy Lamport Snapshot algorithms for FIFO channels ( May
2022, Mark-13)
5. Explain Asynchronous Execution with Synchronous Communication and Synchronous
Program Order on Asynchronous System in detail.
6. Explain Physical clock synchronization technique using NTP – Network Time Protocol.
Faculty Incharge Head of the Department
( ) ( )
HoD Remarks:
