Unit -2: Process

Synchronization

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Outline

 Inter-Process Communication;
 Synchronization:
 The Critical Section Problem;
 Peterson’s Solution;
 Synchronization Hardware;
 Semaphores;
 Classical Problems of Synchronization.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Interprocess Communication
 Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
 Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other processes,
including sharing data
 Reasons for cooperating processes:
 Information sharing
 Computation speedup
 Modularity
 Convenience
 Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC)
 Two models of IPC
 Shared memory
 Message passing

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Communications Models
(a) Message passing. (b) shared memory.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Cooperating Processes
 Independent process cannot affect or be affected by the execution
of another process
 Cooperating process can affect or be affected by the execution of
another process
 Advantages of process cooperation
 Information sharing
 Computation speed-up
 Modularity
 Convenience

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Producer-Consumer Problem
 Paradigm for cooperating processes, producer process
produces information that is consumed by a consumer
process
 unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on the size
of the buffer
 bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed buffer
size

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded-Buffer – Shared-Memory Solution

 Shared data
#define BUFFER_SIZE 10
typedef struct {
. . .
} item;

item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];
int in = 0;
int out = 0;

 Solution is correct, but can only use BUFFER_SIZE-1 elements

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded-Buffer – Producer

item next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */
while (((in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE) == out)
; /* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
}

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded Buffer – Consumer
item next_consumed;
while (true) {
while (in == out)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;

/* consume the item in next consumed */

}

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Interprocess Communication – Shared Memory

 An area of memory shared among the processes that wish

to communicate
 The communication is under the control of the users
processes not the operating system.
 Major issues is to provide mechanism that will allow the
user processes to synchronize their actions when they
access shared memory.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Interprocess Communication – Message Passing

 Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize

their actions

 Message system – processes communicate with each other

without resorting to shared variables

 IPC facility provides two operations:

 send(message)
 receive(message)

 The message size is either fixed or variable

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Message Passing (Cont.)

 If processes P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:

 Establish a communication link between them
 Exchange messages via send/receive
 Implementation issues:
 How are links established?
 Can a link be associated with more than two processes?
 How many links can there be between every pair of
communicating processes?
 What is the capacity of a link?
 Is the size of a message that the link can accommodate fixed or
variable?
 Is a link unidirectional or bi-directional?

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Message Passing (Cont.)

 Implementation of communication link

 Physical:
 Shared memory

 Hardware bus
 Network

 Logical:
 Direct or indirect
 Synchronous or asynchronous
 Automatic or explicit buffering

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Direct Communication
 Processes must name each other explicitly:
 send (P, message) – send a message to process P
 receive(Q, message) – receive a message from process Q
 Properties of communication link
 Links are established automatically
 A link is associated with exactly one pair of communicating
processes
 Between each pair there exists exactly one link
 The link may be unidirectional, but is usually bi-directional

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Indirect Communication

 Messages are directed and received from mailboxes (also referred

to as ports)
 Each mailbox has a unique id
 Processes can communicate only if they share a mailbox
 Properties of communication link
 Link established only if processes share a common mailbox
 A link may be associated with many processes
 Each pair of processes may share several communication links
 Link may be unidirectional or bi-directional

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Indirect Communication
 Operations
 create a new mailbox (port)
 send and receive messages through mailbox
 destroy a mailbox
 Primitives are defined as:
send(A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
receive(A, message) – receive a message from mailbox A

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Indirect Communication
 Mailbox sharing
 P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A
 P1, sends; P2 and P3 receive
 Who gets the message?
 Solutions
 Allow a link to be associated with at most two processes
 Allow only one process at a time to execute a receive
operation
 Allow the system to select arbitrarily the receiver.
Sender is notified who the receiver was.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Synchronization
 Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking
 Blocking is considered synchronous
 Blocking send -- the sender is blocked until the message is
received
 Blocking receive -- the receiver is blocked until a message
is available
 Non-blocking is considered asynchronous
 Non-blocking send -- the sender sends the message and
continue
 Non-blocking receive -- the receiver receives:
 A valid message, or
 Null message
 Different combinations possible
 If both send and receive are blocking, we have a rendezvous

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Synchronization (Cont.)

 Producer-consumer becomes trivial

message next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */
send(next_produced);
}

message next_consumed;
while (true) {
receive(next_consumed);

/* consume the item in next consumed */

}

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Buffering

 Queue of messages attached to the link.

 implemented in one of three ways
1. Zero capacity – no messages are queued on a link.
Sender must wait for receiver (rendezvous)
2. Bounded capacity – finite length of n messages
Sender must wait if link full
3. Unbounded capacity – infinite length
Sender never waits

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Examples of IPC Systems - POSIX

 POSIX Shared Memory

 Process first creates shared memory segment
shm_fd = shm_open(name, O CREAT | O RDWR, 0666);
 Also used to open an existing segment to share it
 Set the size of the object
ftruncate(shm fd, 4096);
 Now the process could write to the shared memory
sprintf(shared memory, "Writing to shared
memory");

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 IPC POSIX Producer

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 IPC POSIX Consumer

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Examples of IPC Systems
 Mach communication is message based
 Even system calls are messages
 Each task gets two mailboxes at creation- Kernel and Notify
 Only three system calls needed for message transfer
msg_send(), msg_receive(), msg_rpc()
 Mailboxes needed for commuication, created via
port_allocate()
 Send and receive are flexible, for example four options if mailbox full:
 Wait indefinitely
 Wait at most n milliseconds
 Return immediately
 Temporarily cache a message

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Examples of IPC Systems – Windows

 Message-passing centric via advanced local procedure call

(LPC) facility
 Only works between processes on the same system
 Uses ports (like mailboxes) to establish and maintain
communication channels
 Communication works as follows:
 The client opens a handle to the subsystem’s
connection port object.
 The client sends a connection request.
 The server creates two private communication ports
and returns the handle to one of them to the client.
 The client and server use the corresponding port handle
to send messages or callbacks and to listen for replies.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Local Procedure Calls in Windows

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Pipes
 Acts as a conduit allowing two processes to communicate
 Issues:
 Is communication unidirectional or bidirectional?
 In the case of two-way communication, is it half or full-
duplex?
 Must there exist a relationship (i.e., parent-child) between
the communicating processes?
 Can the pipes be used over a network?
 Ordinary pipes – cannot be accessed from outside the process
that created it. Typically, a parent process creates a pipe and
uses it to communicate with a child process that it created.
 Named pipes – can be accessed without a parent-child
relationship.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Ordinary Pipes

 Ordinary Pipes allow communication in standard producer-consumer

style
 Producer writes to one end (the write-end of the pipe)
 Consumer reads from the other end (the read-end of the pipe)
 Ordinary pipes are therefore unidirectional
 Require parent-child relationship between communicating processes

 Windows calls these anonymous pipes

 See Unix and Windows code samples in textbook

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Named Pipes

 Named Pipes are more powerful than ordinary pipes

 Communication is bidirectional
 No parent-child relationship is necessary between the
communicating processes
 Several processes can use the named pipe for communication
 Provided on both UNIX and Windows systems

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Background
 Processes can execute concurrently
 May be interrupted at any time, partially completing
execution
 Concurrent access to shared data may result in data
inconsistency
 Maintaining data consistency requires mechanisms to ensure
the orderly execution of cooperating processes
 Illustration of the problem:
Suppose that we wanted to provide a solution to the
consumer-producer problem that fills all the buffers. We can
do so by having an integer counter that keeps track of the
number of full buffers. Initially, counter is set to 0. It is
incremented by the producer after it produces a new buffer
and is decremented by the consumer after it consumes a
buffer.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Producer

while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */

while (counter == BUFFER_SIZE) ;

/* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
counter++;
}

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Consumer

while (true) {
while (counter == 0)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
counter--;
/* consume the item in next consumed */
}

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Race Condition

 counter++ could be implemented as

register1 = counter
register1 = register1 + 1
counter = register1
 counter-- could be implemented as
register2 = counter
register2 = register2 - 1
counter = register2

 Consider this execution interleaving with “count = 5” initially:

S0: producer execute register1 = counter {register1 = 5}
S1: producer execute register1 = register1 + 1 {register1 = 6}
S2: consumer execute register2 = counter {register2 = 5}
S3: consumer execute register2 = register2 – 1 {register2 = 4}
S4: producer execute counter = register1 {counter = 6 }
S5: consumer execute counter = register2 {counter = 4}

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Critical Section Problem
 Consider system of n processes {p0, p1, … pn-1}
 Each process has critical section segment of code
 Process may be changing common variables, updating
table, writing file, etc
 When one process in critical section, no other may be in its
critical section
 Critical section problem is to design protocol to solve this
 Each process must ask permission to enter critical section in
entry section, may follow critical section with exit section,
then remainder section

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Critical Section

 General structure of process Pi

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Algorithm for Process Pi

do {

while (turn == j);

critical section
turn = j;

remainder section
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Solution to Critical-Section Problem
1. Mutual Exclusion - If process Pi is executing in its critical
section, then no other processes can be executing in their
critical sections
2. Progress - If no process is executing in its critical section and
there exist some processes that wish to enter their critical
section, then the selection of the processes that will enter the
critical section next cannot be postponed indefinitely
3. Bounded Waiting - A bound must exist on the number of
times that other processes are allowed to enter their critical
sections after a process has made a request to enter its critical
section and before that request is granted
 Assume that each process executes at a nonzero speed
 No assumption concerning relative speed of the n
processes

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Critical-Section Handling in OS
Two approaches depending on if kernel is preemptive or non-
preemptive
 Preemptive – allows preemption of process when running
in kernel mode
 Non-preemptive – runs until exits kernel mode, blocks, or
voluntarily yields CPU
Essentially free of race conditions in kernel mode

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Peterson’s Solution
(Two Process Solution)
 Good algorithmic description of solving the problem
 Two process solution
 Assume that the load and store machine-language
instructions are atomic; that is, cannot be interrupted
 The two processes share two variables:
 int turn;
 Boolean flag[2]

 The variable turn indicates whose turn it is to enter the critical

section
 The flag array is used to indicate if a process is ready to enter
the critical section. flag[i] = true implies that process Pi is
ready!

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Algorithm for Process Pi

do {
flag[i] = true;
turn = j;
while (flag[j] && turn = = j);
critical section
flag[i] = false;
remainder section
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Peterson’s Solution (Cont.)
 Provable that the three CS requirement are met:
1. Mutual exclusion is preserved
Pi enters CS only if:
either flag[j] = false or turn = i
2. Progress requirement is satisfied
3. Bounded-waiting requirement is met

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Synchronization Hardware
 Many systems provide hardware support for implementing the
critical section code.
 All solutions below based on idea of locking
 Protecting critical regions via locks
 Uniprocessors – could disable interrupts
 Currently running code would execute without preemption
 Generally too inefficient on multiprocessor systems
 Operating systems using this not broadly scalable

 Modern machines provide special atomic hardware instructions

 Atomic = non-interruptible

 Either test memory word and set value

 Or swap contents of two memory words

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Solution to Critical-section Problem Using Locks

do {
acquire lock
critical section
release lock
remainder section
} while (TRUE);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 test_and_set Instruction
Definition:
boolean test_and_set (boolean *target)
{
boolean rv = *target;
*target = TRUE;
return rv:
}
1. Executed atomically
2. Returns the original value of passed parameter
3. Set the new value of passed parameter to “TRUE”.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Solution using test_and_set()

 Shared Boolean variable lock, initialized to FALSE

 Solution:
do {
while (test_and_set(&lock))
; /* do nothing */
/* critical section */
lock = false;
/* remainder section */
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.45 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 compare_and_swap Instruction
Definition:
int compare _and_swap(int *value, int expected, int new_value) {
int temp = *value;

if (*value == expected)
*value = new_value;
return temp;
}
1. Executed atomically
2. Returns the original value of passed parameter “value”
3. Set the variable “value” the value of the passed parameter “new_value”
but only if “value” ==“expected”. That is, the swap takes place only under
this condition.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.46 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Solution using compare_and_swap
 Shared integer “lock” initialized to 0;
 Solution:
do {
while (compare_and_swap(&lock, 0, 1) != 0)
; /* do nothing */
/* critical section */
lock = 0;
/* remainder section */
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.47 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded-waiting Mutual Exclusion with test_and_set

do {
waiting[i] = true;
key = true;
while (waiting[i] && key)
key = test_and_set(&lock);
waiting[i] = false;
/* critical section */
j = (i + 1) % n;
while ((j != i) && !waiting[j])
j = (j + 1) % n;
if (j == i)
lock = false;
else
waiting[j] = false;
/* remainder section */
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.48 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Mutex Locks
 Previous solutions are complicated and generally inaccessible
to application programmers
 OS designers build software tools to solve critical section
problem
 Simplest is mutex lock
 Protect a critical section by first acquire() a lock then
release() the lock
 Boolean variable indicating if lock is available or not
 Calls to acquire() and release() must be atomic
 Usually implemented via hardware atomic instructions
 But this solution requires busy waiting
 This lock therefore called a spinlock

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.49 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 acquire() and release()
 acquire() {
while (!available)
; /* busy wait */
available = false;;
}
 release() {
available = true;
}
 do {
acquire lock
critical section
release lock
remainder section
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.50 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Semaphore
 Synchronization tool that provides more sophisticated ways (than Mutex locks)
for process to synchronize their activities.
 Semaphore S – integer variable
 Can only be accessed via two indivisible (atomic) operations
 wait() and signal()
 Originally called P() and V()
 Definition of the wait() operation
wait(S) {
while (S <= 0)
; // busy wait
S--;
}
 Definition of the signal() operation
signal(S) {
S++;
}

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.51 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Semaphore Usage
 Counting semaphore – integer value can range over an unrestricted
domain
 Binary semaphore – integer value can range only between 0 and 1
 Same as a mutex lock
 Can solve various synchronization problems
 Consider P1 and P2 that require S1 to happen before S2
Create a semaphore “synch” initialized to 0
P1:
S 1;
signal(synch);
P2:
wait(synch) ;
S 2;
 Can implement a counting semaphore S as a binary semaphore

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.52 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Semaphore Implementation
 Must guarantee that no two processes can execute the wait()
and signal() on the same semaphore at the same time
 Thus, the implementation becomes the critical section problem
where the wait and signal code are placed in the critical
section
 Could now have busy waiting in critical section
implementation
 But implementation code is short
 Little busy waiting if critical section rarely occupied
 Note that applications may spend lots of time in critical sections
and therefore this is not a good solution

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.53 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Semaphore Implementation with no Busy waiting

 With each semaphore there is an associated waiting queue

 Each entry in a waiting queue has two data items:
 value (of type integer)
 pointer to next record in the list
 Two operations:
 block – place the process invoking the operation on the
appropriate waiting queue
 wakeup – remove one of processes in the waiting queue
and place it in the ready queue
 typedef struct{
int value;
struct process *list;
} semaphore;

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.54 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Implementation with no Busy waiting (Cont.)

wait(semaphore *S) {
S->value--;
if (S->value < 0) {
add this process to S->list;
block();
}
}

signal(semaphore *S) {
S->value++;
if (S->value <= 0) {
remove a process P from S->list;
wakeup(P);
}
}

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.55 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Deadlock and Starvation
 Deadlock – two or more processes are waiting indefinitely for an
event that can be caused by only one of the waiting processes
 Let S and Q be two semaphores initialized to 1
P0 P1
wait(S); wait(Q);
wait(Q); wait(S);
... ...
signal(S); signal(Q);
signal(Q); signal(S);

 Starvation – indefinite blocking

 A process may never be removed from the semaphore queue in which it is
suspended
 Priority Inversion – Scheduling problem when lower-priority process
holds a lock needed by higher-priority process
 Solved via priority-inheritance protocol

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.56 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Classical Problems of Synchronization

 Classical problems used to test newly-proposed synchronization

schemes
 Bounded-Buffer Problem
 Readers and Writers Problem
 Dining-Philosophers Problem

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.57 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded-Buffer Problem

 n buffers, each can hold one item

 Semaphore mutex initialized to the value 1
 Semaphore full initialized to the value 0
 Semaphore empty initialized to the value n

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.58 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded Buffer Problem (Cont.)

 The structure of the producer process

do {
...
/* produce an item in next_produced */
...
wait(empty);
wait(mutex);
...
/* add next produced to the buffer */
...
signal(mutex);
signal(full);
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.59 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded Buffer Problem (Cont.)
 The structure of the consumer process

Do {
wait(full);
wait(mutex);
...
/* remove an item from buffer to next_consumed */
...
signal(mutex);
signal(empty);
...
/* consume the item in next consumed */
...
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.60 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Readers-Writers Problem
 A data set is shared among a number of concurrent processes
 Readers – only read the data set; they do not perform any updates
 Writers – can both read and write
 Problem – allow multiple readers to read at the same time
 Only one single writer can access the shared data at the same time
 Several variations of how readers and writers are considered – all
involve some form of priorities
 Shared Data
 Data set
 Semaphore rw_mutex initialized to 1
 Semaphore mutex initialized to 1
 Integer read_count initialized to 0

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.61 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Readers-Writers Problem (Cont.)

 The structure of a writer process

do {
wait(rw_mutex);
...
/* writing is performed */
...
signal(rw_mutex);
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.62 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Readers-Writers Problem (Cont.)
 The structure of a reader process
do {
wait(mutex);
read_count++;
if (read_count == 1)
wait(rw_mutex);
signal(mutex);
...
/* reading is performed */
...
wait(mutex);
read count--;
if (read_count == 0)
signal(rw_mutex);
signal(mutex);
} while (true);

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.63 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Readers-Writers Problem Variations

 First variation – no reader kept waiting unless writer has

permission to use shared object
 Second variation – once writer is ready, it performs the
write ASAP
 Both may have starvation leading to even more variations
 Problem is solved on some systems by kernel providing
reader-writer locks

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.64 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Dining-Philosophers Problem

 Philosophers spend their lives alternating thinking and eating

 Don’t interact with their neighbors, occasionally try to pick up 2
chopsticks (one at a time) to eat from bowl
 Need both to eat, then release both when done
 In the case of 5 philosophers
 Shared data
 Bowl of rice (data set)
 Semaphore chopstick [5] initialized to 1

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.65 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Dining-Philosophers Problem Algorithm
 The structure of Philosopher i:
do {
wait (chopstick[i] );
wait (chopStick[ (i + 1) % 5] );

// eat

signal (chopstick[i] );
signal (chopstick[ (i + 1) % 5] );

// think

} while (TRUE);
 What is the problem with this algorithm?

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.66 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Dining-Philosophers Problem Algorithm (Cont.)

 Deadlock handling
 Allow at most 4 philosophers to be sitting
simultaneously at the table.
 Allow a philosopher to pick up the forks only if both
are available (picking must be done in a critical
section.
 Use an asymmetric solution -- an odd-numbered
philosopher picks up first the left chopstick and then
the right chopstick. Even-numbered philosopher picks
up first the right chopstick and then the left chopstick.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 2nd Edition 6.67 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013