CSE 393 Concurrent and Distributed Algorithms

The distinction can be conceptual, like in multi-player games: players can be physically and geographically distributed but connected to a server and seeing the shared state of the game, or physically together but communicate following certain rule and not seeing each other's state. Indeed a system can have both aspects at the same time, with some data shared, and some data private. In general, it is helpful to think of these systems as multi-agent systems. What they need fundamentally, going beyond centralized sequential systems, is the ability to communicate and synchronize.