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Evolution of distributed computing theory: from concurrency to networks and beyond

Published: 18 August 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Nancy Lynch has written over 400 scientific papers in a career spanning nearly four decades. She is best known for her seminal and continuing work in theory of distributed computing, a field that did not exist in 1971 when she wrote her first paper. Her first distributed computing paper was presented eight years later after she had already written 21 papers on other topics.
This talk looks at the early years of theoretical research in distributed computing, tracing its roots to recursive function theory, computational complexity, formal semantics, and concurrency theory. Especially interesting is the role that notions of mathematical rigor and formalisms played in this development. The level of rigor commonplace in recursive function theory was just beginning to be applied to the analysis of sequential algorithms, and few formal tools existed for describing and analyzing concurrent processes, which were mostly understood by ad-hoc means. Nancy was well aware that this situation would need to be remedied before the field could progress. Upper bound results require unambiguous means for expressing algorithms as well as precise complexity measures. Lower bounds require careful problem statements and specifications of solution spaces. Nancy's early papers on concurrency reveal first attempts to deal with these issues; they later became a central focus of her work.
The evolution of the notion of distributed system as distinct from parallel or concurrent system resulted from making precise many notions that we now understand as fundamental to distributed systems: communication mechanisms, synchrony properties, fairness, autonomy, reliability, non-determinism, and fault-tolerance. Later work added real-time, processor identity, randomness, recoverability, and many other properties to this list. Formalisms not only gave rigor to these notions; they also exposed heretofore hidden assumptions that had limited previous work.
Nancy is remarkable for her ability to see the importance of a notion while it is still only a vague intuition, to articulate it in precise mathematical terms, and to lead others in the field. Given her great achievements, it is most fitting that the PODC and CONCUR communities should honor her with this celebration.

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  • (2020)Performance evaluation of K-means clustering on Hadoop infrastructureJournal of Discrete Mathematical Sciences and Cryptography10.1080/09720529.2019.169244422:8(1349-1363)Online publication date: 13-Jan-2020

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cover image ACM Conferences
PODC '08: Proceedings of the twenty-seventh ACM symposium on Principles of distributed computing
August 2008
474 pages
ISBN:9781595939890
DOI:10.1145/1400751
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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 18 August 2008

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  1. distributed computing
  2. nancy lynch

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PODC '08

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Overall Acceptance Rate 740 of 2,477 submissions, 30%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2020)Performance evaluation of K-means clustering on Hadoop infrastructureJournal of Discrete Mathematical Sciences and Cryptography10.1080/09720529.2019.169244422:8(1349-1363)Online publication date: 13-Jan-2020

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