December 2012
Beginner
944 pages
31h 42m
English
Content preview from Operating System Concepts, 9th Edition
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
Start your free trial
CHAPTER 17
Distributed Systems
A distributed system is a collection of processors that do not share memory or a clock. Instead, each node has its own local memory. The nodes communicate with one another through various networks, such as high-speed buses and the Internet. In this chapter, we discuss the general structure of distributed systems and the networks that interconnect them. We also contrast the main differences in operating-system design between these systems and centralized systems.
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
- To provide a high-level overview of distributed systems and the networks that interconnect them.
- To describe the general structure of distributed operating systems.
- To explain general communication structure and communication protocols.
- To discuss issues concerning the design of distributed systems.
17.1 Advantages of Distributed Systems
A distributed system is a collection of loosely coupled nodes interconnected by a communication network. From the point of view of a specific node in a distributed system, the rest of the nodes and their respective resources are remote, whereas its own resources are local.
The nodes in a distributed system may vary in size and function. They may include small microprocessors, personal computers, and large general-purpose computer systems. These processors are referred to by a number of names, such as processors, sites, machines, and hosts, depending on the context in which they are mentioned. We mainly use site to indicate the location ...