Distributed systems and distributed processing

- The term distributed systems refers to…a set of independent computers connected through…either a local area network or wide area network.…These computers share resources,…such as CPUs or storage devices.…They provide an infrastructure for distributed processing.…Computers in distributed systems don't share main memory,…and their only way of communicating…is through network connections.…

Another characteristic of distributed systems…is the fact that the time to exchange messages…between computers is significantly longer when compared…with the time between events occurring on CPUs.…Since the communication overhead is high,…it doesn't make any sense…to use a distributed system when you can finish a job…in a short time frame, like seconds.…Let's say that you need to process a big dataset,…and it takes several hours.…

Now it's worth using a distributed system…since the time spent on messaging is negligible…when compared to the total time it takes to finish a job.…In addition, you can handle bigger data sizes…and reduce the overall processing time…