1. What is a message passing system? Discuss the desirable feature of a message passing system. Ans.

Message passing is the paradigm of communication where messages are sent from a sender to one or more recipients. Forms of messages include (remote) method invocation, signals, and data packets. When designing a message passing system several choices are made: Whether messages are transferred reliably Whether messages are guaranteed to be delivered in order Whether messages are passed one-to-one, one-to-many (multicasting or broadcasting), or many-to-one (clientserver). Whether communication is synchronous or asynchronous. Prominent theoretical foundations of concurrent computation, such as the Actor model and the process calculi are based on message passing. Implementations of concurrent systems that use message passing can either have message passing as an integral part of the language, or as a series of library calls from the language. Examples of the former include many distributed object systems. Examples of the latter include Microkernel operating systems pass messages between one kernel and one or more server blocks, and the Message Passing Interface used in highperformance computing. Message passing systems and models Distributed object and remote method invocation systems like ONC RPC, Corba, Java RMI, DCOM, SOAP, .NET Remoting, CTOS, QNX Neutrino RTOS, OpenBinder, D-Bus and similar are message passing systems. Message passing systems have been called "shared nothing" systems because the message passing abstraction hides underlying state changes that may be used in the implementation of sending messages. Message passing model based programming languages typically define messaging as the (usually asynchronous) sending (usually by copy) of a data item to a communication endpoint (Actor, process, thread, socket, etc.). Such messaging is used in Web Services by SOAP. This concept is the higher-level version of a datagram except that messages can be larger than a packet and can optionally be made reliable, durable, secure, and/or transacted. Messages are also commonly used in the same sense as a means of interprocess communication; the other common technique being streams or pipes, in which data are sent as a sequence of elementary data items instead (the higher-level version of a virtual circuit). Examples of message passing style #Actor model implementation #Amorphous computing #Flow-based programming #SOAP (protocol) Synchronous versus asynchronous message passing

Synchronous message passing systems require the sender and receiver to wait for each other to transfer the message. That is, the sender will not continue until the receiver has received the message. Synchronous communication has two advantages. The first advantage is that reasoning about the program can be simplified in that there is a synchronisation point between sender and receiver on message transfer. The second advantage is that no buffering is required. The message can always be stored on the receiving side, because the sender will not continue until the receiver is ready. Asynchronous message passing systems deliver a message from sender to receiver, without waiting for the receiver to be ready. The advantage of asynchronous communication is that the sender and receiver can overlap their computation because they do not wait for each other Synchronous communication can be built on top of asynchronous communication by ensuring that the sender always wait for an acknowledgement message from the receiver before continuing. The buffer required in asynchronous communication can cause problems when it is full. A decision has to be made whether to block the sender or whether to discard future messages. If the sender is blocked, it may lead to an unexpected deadlock. If messages are dropped, then communication is no longer reliable. 2. Discuss the implementation of RPC Mechanism in detail. Ans: In computer science, a remote procedure call (RPC) is an inter-process communication that allows a computer program to cause a subroutine or procedure to execute in another address space (commonly on another computer on a shared network) without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this remote interaction. That is, the programmer writes essentially the same code whether the subroutine is local to the executing program, or remote. When the software in question uses object-oriented principles, RPC is called remote invocation or remote method invocation. Note that there are many different (often incompatible) technologies commonly used to accomplish this. Message passing An RPC is initiated by the client, which sends a request message to a known remote server to execute a specified procedure with supplied parameters. The remote server sends a response to the client, and the application continues its process. There are many variations and subtleties in various implementations, resulting in a variety of different (incompatible) RPC protocols. While the server is processing the call, the client is blocked (it waits until the server has finished processing before resuming execution). An important difference between remote procedure calls and local calls is that remote calls can fail because of unpredictable network problems. Also, callers generally must deal with such failures without knowing whether the remote procedure was actually invoked. Idempotent

procedures (those that have no additional effects if called more than once) are easily handled, but enough difficulties remain that code to call remote procedures is often confined to carefully written low-level subsystems. Sequence of events during a RPC The client calls the Client stub. The call is a local procedure call, with parameters pushed on to the stack in the normal way. The client stub packs the parameters into a message and makes a system call to send the message. Packing the parameters is called marshalling. The kernel sends the message from the client machine to the server machine. The kernel passes the incoming packets to the server stub. Finally, the server stub calls the server procedure. The reply traces the same steps in the reverse direction. 3. Discuss the following with respect to Distributed Shared Memory: a. Memory Coherence (Consistency) Models (2) b. Memory Consistency model(2) c. Implementing Sequential Consistency (3) d. Centralized Server Algorithm (3) Ans: (d) Centralized-Server Algorithm A central server maintains a block table containing owner-node and copy-set information for each block. When a read/write fault for a block occurs at node N, the fault handler at node N sends a read/write request to the central server. Upon receiving the request, the central-server does the following: If it is a read request: adds N to the copy-set field and sends the owner node information to node N upon receiving this information, N sends a request for the block to the owner node. upon receiving this request, the owner returns a copy of the block to N. If it is a write request: It sends the copy-set and owner information of the block to node N and initializes copy-set to {N} Node N sends a request for the block to the owner node and an invalidation message to all blocks in the copy-set. Upon receiving this request, the owner sends the block to node N e. Memory Consistency model(2) Choosing an appropriate memory consistency model (MCM) is a tradeoff between minimizing memory access order constraints and the complexity of the programming model as well as of the complexity of the memory model itself. The weakest possible memory is one returning for a read access some previously written value or a value that will be written in the future.

Thus, the memory system could choose to return any of those values. While minimizing ordering constraints perfectly, it is not useful as a programming model. Implementing weaker models is also often more complex as it is necessary to keep track of outstanding accesses and restrict the order of execution of two accesses when necessary. It is therefore not surprising that many different MCMs have been proposed and new models are to be expected in the future. Unfortunately, there is no single hierarchy that could be used to classify the strictness of a consistency model. Below, we dene the design space for consistency models. This allows us to classify the various models more easily. Memory consistency models impose ordering restrictions on accesses depending on a number of attributes. In general, the more attributes a model distinguishes, the weaker the model is. Some attributes a model could distinguish are listed below: location of access direction of access (read, write, or both) value transmitted in access causality of access 4. Explain the following with respect to Resource Managemant of Distributed System: a. Task assignment Approach b. Load- Balancing Approach c. Load- Sharing approach Ans: A) Task assignment Approach Each process is viewed as a collection of tasks. These tasks are scheduled to suitable processor to improve performance. This is not a widely used approach because: It requires characteristics of all the processes to be known in advance. This approach does not take into consideration the dynamically changing state of the system. In this approach, a process is considered to be composed of multiple tasks and the goal is to find an optimal assignment policy for the tasks of an individual process. The following are typical assumptions for the task assignment approach:

Minimize IPC cost (this problem can be modeled using network flow model) Efficient resource utilization Quick turnaround time A high degree of parallelism B) Approach Load Balancing In this, the processes are distributed among nodes to equalize the load among all nodes. The scheduling algorithms that use this approach are known as Load Balancing or Load Leveling Algorithms. These algorithms are based on the intuition that for better resource utilization, it is desirable for the load in a distributed system to be balanced evenly. This a load balancing algorithm tries to balance the total system load by transparently transferring the workload from heavily loaded nodes to lightly loaded nodes in an attempt to ensure good overall performance relative to some specific metric of system performance. We can have the following categories of load balancing algorithms: Static: Ignore the current state of the system. E.g. if a node is heavily loaded, it picks up a task randomly and transfers it to a random node. These algorithms are simpler to implement but performance may not be good. Dynamic: Use the current state information for load balancing. There is an overhead involved in collecting state information periodically; they perform better than static algorithms. Deterministic: Algorithms in this class use the processor and process characteristics to allocate processes to nodes. Probabilistic: Algorithms in this class use information regarding static attributes of the system such as number of nodes, processing capability, etc. Centralized: System state information is collected by a single node. This node makes all scheduling decisions. Distributed: Most desired approach. Each node is equally responsible for making scheduling decisions based on the local state and the state information received from other sites. Cooperative: A distributed dynamic scheduling algorithm. In these algorithms, the distributed entities cooperate with each other to make scheduling decisions. Therefore they are more complex and involve larger overhead than non-cooperative ones. But the stability of a cooperative algorithm is better than of a non-cooperative one.

Non-Cooperative: A distributed dynamic scheduling algorithm. In these algorithms, individual entities act as autonomous entities and make scheduling decisions independently of the action of other entities. C) Load Sharing Approach Several researchers believe that load balancing, with its implication of attempting to equalize workload on all the nodes of the system, is not an appropriate objective. This is because the overhead involved in gathering the state information to achieve this objective is normally very large, especially in distributed systems having a large number of nodes. In fact, for the proper utilization of resources of a distributed system, it is not required to balance the load on all the nodes. It is necessary and sufficient to prevent the nodes from being idle while some other nodes have more than two processes. This rectification is called the Dynamic Load Sharing instead of Dynamic Load Balancing. The design of a load sharing algorithms require that proper decisions be made regarding load estimation policy, process transfer policy, state information exchange policy, priority assignment policy, and migration limiting policy. It is simpler to decide about most of these policies in case of load sharing, because load sharing algorithms do not attempt to balance the average workload of all the nodes of the system. Rather, they only attempt to ensure that no node is idle when a node is heavily loaded. The priority assignments policies and the migration limiting policies for load-sharing algorithms are the same as that of load-balancing algorithms. 6. Describe the clock synchronization algorithms and distributed algorithms in the context of synchronization. Ans: Clock Synchronization Algorithms Clock synchronization algorithms may be broadly classified as Centralized and Distributed: Centralized Algorithms In centralized clock synchronization algorithms one node has a real-time receiver. This node, called the time server node whose clock time is regarded as correct and used as the reference time. The goal of these algorithms is to keep the clocks of all other nodes synchronized with the clock time of the time server node. Depending on the role of the time server node, centralized clock synchronization algorithms are again of two types Passive Time Sever and Active Time Server. 1. Passive Time Server Centralized Algorithm: In this method each node periodically sends a message to the time server. When the time server receives the message, it quickly responds with a message (time = T), where T is the current time in the clock of the time server node. Assume that when the client node sends the time = ? message, its clock time is T0, and when it receives the time = T message, its clock time is T1. Since T0 and T1 are measured using the same clock, in the absence of any other information, the best estimate of the time required for the propagation of the message time = T from the time server node to the clients node is (T1T0)/2. Therefore, when the reply is received at the clients node, its clock is readjusted to T +

(T1-T0)/2. 2. Active Time Server Centralized Algorithm: In this approach, the time server periodically broadcasts its clock time (time = T). The other nodes receive the broadcast message and use the clock time in the message for correcting their own clocks. Each node has a priori knowledge of the approximate time (Ta) required for the propagation of the message time = T from the time server node to its own node, Therefore, when a broadcast message is received at a node, the nodes clock is readjusted to the time T+Ta. A major drawback of this method is that it is not fault tolerant. If the broadcast message reaches too late at a node due to some communication fault, the clock of that node will be readjusted to an incorrect value. Another disadvantage of this approach is that it requires broadcast facility to be supported by the network. 2. Another active time server algorithm that overcomes the drawbacks of the above algorithm is the Berkeley algorithm proposed by Gusella and Zatti for internal synchronization of clocks of a group of computers running the Berkeley UNIX. In this algorithm, the time server periodically sends a message (time = ?) to all the computers in the group. On receiving this message, each computer sends back its clock value to the time server. The time server has a priori knowledge of the approximate time required for the propagation of a message from each node to its own node. Based on this knowledge, it first readjusts the clock values of the reply messages, It then takes a fault-tolerant average of the clock values of all the computers (including its own). To take the fault tolerant average, the time server chooses a subset of all clock values that do not differ from one another by more than a specified amount, and the average is taken only for the clock values in this subset. This approach eliminates readings from unreliable clocks whose clock values could have a significant adverse effect if an ordinary average was taken. The calculated average is the current time to which all the clocks should be readjusted, The time server readjusts its own clock to this value, Instead of sending the calculated current time back to other computers, the time server sends the amount by which each individual computers clock requires adjustment, This can be a positive or negative value and is calculated based on the knowledge the time server has about the approximate time required for the propagation of a message from each node to its own node. Centralized clock synchronization algorithms suffer from two major drawbacks: 1. They are subject to single point failure. If the time server node fails, the clock synchronization operation cannot be performed. This makes the system unreliable. Ideally, a distributed system, should be more reliable than its individual nodes. If one goes down, the rest should continue to function correctly. 2. From a scalability point of view it is generally not acceptable to get all the time requests serviced by a single time server. In a large system, such a solution puts a heavy burden on that one process. Distributed Algorithms We know that externally synchronized clocks are also internally synchronized. That is, if each nodes clock is independently synchronized with real time, all the clocks of the system remain mutually synchronized. Therefore, a simple method for clock synchronization may be to equip each node of the system with a real time receiver so that each nodes clock can be independently synchronized with real time. Multiple real time clocks (one for each node) are normally used for

this purpose. Theoretically, internal synchronization of clocks is not required in this approach. However, in practice, due to inherent inaccuracy of real-time clocks, different real time clocks produce different time. Therefore, internal synchronization is normally performed for better accuracy. One of the following two approaches is used for internal synchronization in this case. 1. Global Averaging Distributed Algorithms: In this approach, the clock process at each node broadcasts its local clock time in the form of a special resync message when its local time equals T0+iR for some integer I, where T0 is a fixed time in the past agreed upon by all nodes and R is a system parameter that depends on such factors as the total number of nodes in the system, the maximum allowable drift rate, and so on. i.e. a resync message is broadcast from each node at the beginning of every fixed length resynchronization interval. However, since the clocks of different nodes run slightly different rates, these broadcasts will not happen simultaneously from all nodes. After broadcasting the clock value, the clock process of a node waits for time T, where T is a parameter to be determined by the algorithm. During this waiting period, the clock process records the time, according to its own clock, when the message was received. At the end of the waiting period, the clock process estimates the skew of its clock with respect to each of the other nodes on the basis of the times at which it received resync messages. It then computes a fault-tolerant average of the next resynchronization interval. 2. The global averaging algorithms differ mainly in the manner in which the fault-tolerant average of the estimated skews is calculated. Two commonly used algorithms are: 1. The simplest algorithm is to take the average of the estimated skews and use it as the correction for the local clock. However, to limit the impact of faulty clocks on the average value, the estimated skew with respect to each node is compared against a threshold, and skews greater than the threshold are set to zero before computing the average of the estimated skews. 2. In another algorithm, each node limits the impact of faulty clocks by first discarding the m highest and m lowest estimated skews and then calculating the average of the remaining skews, which is then used as the correction for the local clock. The value of m is usually decided based on the total number of clocks (nodes).