Clock Synchronization and Adversarial Fault Tolerance

• Please check out the instructions for assignments file in the Materials section.
• Please note that the deadline for HISPOS registration for SIC students is FIXME
• Having considered multiple options, we have chosen to use Zoom as the platform for this course. Please read the notes about Zoom and data privacy at the bottom of this page.
• Register for the course via the mailing list: https://lists.mpi-inf.mpg.de/listinfo/csaft-2021 . Registration to the mailing list helps us know who is taking the course, communicate important announcements, discuss the course contents, etc. It does not automatically imply registration for the exams and grades. For this, please check the registration requirements of your respective programmes.
• External students are welcome to attend the course. If you are not enrolled with Saarland University, but would like to take credit for the course at your university, please contact us early on. We will then see whether an arrangement with your university can be found.

This course does not follow a traditional classroom model. You are expected to study reading assignments before the live online sessions, in which the lecturers will provide additional context for the topics. Reading this material and providing short summaries is the lion's share of the course work outside of the sessions. Beside presentations by the lecturers, the sessions will contain Q&A sessions at the beginning of each chapter, and live exercises in breakout rooms. Active participation is highly encouraged and contributes to grades.

To be successful in this course, you will need to read the recommended material, understand it, analyze it, question it, and then reconstruct it in your own way. You will have to hand in a short summary of the material for each major topic, where, in addition to the contents, you will describe your thoughts and questions on it. These submissions contribute a total of 25% for your final grade. Another 25% will be determined from your active participation in the sessions.

At the end of the semester, you will receive an assignment comprising of a number of questions on one of the major topics of your choice. You will then have two weeks to solve these questions and explain your solutions in writing. This involves extracting and presenting the relevant context from the reading material, in a way that clearly conveys the key ideas underlying your solutions. This final assignment will contribute the remaining 50% of your grade.

Grades for he course will computed as follows:

• Topic Summaries (25%). There will be 9 topics. Hence, 9 summaries will be expected throughout the semester. Summaries are individual pieces of work. We encourage you to discuss the material with your fellow classmates, but the final work must be your own and reflect your understanding and insights into the topic.
• Participation (25%). Attending the sessions is highly recommended, since the class discussions will be graded.
• Final Submission (50%). Final evaluation will be based on a written submission that solves some tailored questions and summarizes the relevant material for these solutions, for a topic of your choice.

For the topic summaries and the participation, the two worst individual grades will be discarded (in total, not individually for each category). (Further) absences can be justified, but require a medical certificate or equivalent proof.

• Instructions for your assignments (updated date on 2021-04-12, update 'bonus questions' on 2021-04-15)
• Context, motivation, model, and (a) task of the lecture (fixed formatting 2021-04-15)
• Reading material for the chapters: See above table
  (Ch. 11 reuploaded on 2021-05-10; Ch. 11 sessions preponed from 2021-05-17 to 2021-05-12 on 2021-05-11; Ch. 12 extended and reuploaded on 2021-05-21; Ch. 12 extended again and reuploaded on 2021-05-21; Ch 13 fixed a typo on 2021-06-11; Ch. 15 completed on 2021-06-20.)
• Supplementary material Ch. 11: moore.vhdl, gate_level_register_grid.v (plus some private files, ask if you haven't received them yet.)
• Appendix: Basic math definitions and theorems (fixed formatting 2021-04-15)

We have decided to use Zoom as a videoconferencing service. Note that this provider (Zoom Video
Communications, Inc., 55 Almaden Blvd, Suite 600, San Jose, CA 95113, USA) can access all data that
you provide when registering for the video conference. If you do not provide personal data during
the registration, there is still a possibility that Zoom identifies you using your IP address. We
would not have decided to use Zoom if we considered this as a significant risk. As an additional
precaution, we have opted to use European computing centers. Should you still have privacy concerns
(and are not using an Internet Service Provider that cannot map IP addresses to your name), we
suggest using an anonymization service such as Tor (https://www.torproject.org/)

You can find Zoom's complete privacy policy at: zoom.us/de-de/privacy.html

We would be happy if we could create a pleasant lecture environment despite the current situation.
Personal interactions, with your microphone and camera switched on, may contribute to this
environment. We also encourage you to ask questions verbally. Note that this is voluntary. You may
switch off both your camera and your microphone, and register under a pseudonym. Questions are
still possible, in particular using the chat function.