Programming Distributed Systems

For a number of technical and economic reasons, distributed computing is increasing rapidly in importance. The main technical considerations are the increased performance of small machines and of communications systems relative to that of giant computers and the opportunity for greater system reliability through redundancy. The economic considerations include all of the technical ones plus additional aspects including the geographic dispersal of needs and the organizational advantages of more specialized facilities (cf. Bank of America article in Datamation [1976]). The Computer Science Department of the University of Rochester has, from its inception in 1974, directed much of its research effort toward a better understanding of distributed computing.