Distributed computing

Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal. A computer program that runs in a distributed system is called a distributed program, and distributed programming is the process of writing such programs.[1]

Distributed computing also refers to the use of distributed systems to solve computational problems. In distributed computing, a problem is divided into many tasks, each of which is solved by one or more computers.[2]

They communicate with each other by message passing.[3]



following defining properties are commonly used:

There are several autonomous computational entities, each of which has its own local memory.[7]
The entities communicate with each other by message passing.[8]

Other typical properties of distributed systems include the following:

The system has to tolerate failures in individual computers.[11]
The structure of the system (network topology, network latency, number of computers) is not known in advance, the system may consist of different kinds of computers and network links, and the system may change during the execution of a distributed program.[12]
Each computer has only a limited, incomplete view of the system. Each computer may know only one part of the input.[13]
In parallel computing, all processors have access to a shared memory. Shared memory can be used to exchange information between processors.[17]
In distributed computing, each processor has its own private memory (distributed memory). Information is exchanged by passing messages between the processors.[18]