Distributed Computing Through Combinatorial Topology

Distributed Computing Through Combinatorial Topology describes techniques for analyzing distributed algorithms for real systems reliant on parallelism with unpredictable delays, such as multicore microprocessors, wireless networks, distributed systems, and Internet protocols. The book offers a self-contained explanation of the mathematics to readers with computer science backgrounds, as well as explaining computer science concepts to readers with backgrounds in applied mathematics. Each concept is presented in two ways: first, proving a simple result that lends itself to examples to build up intuition; then generalizing the concept to prove a more sophisticated result. The overall result weaves together and develops the basic concepts of the field in a gradual and intuitively appealing way. The authors share mathematical notions and models for message-passing and shared-memory systems, based on award-winning combinatorial topology research.