Process coordination in a multitasking OS

 ^–       Race condition: several processes access and manipulate the same data concurrently and the outcome of the execution depends on the particular order in which the access take place

 ^–       critical section: when one process is executing in a critical section, no other process is to be allowed to execute in its critical section

 ^–       Mutual exclusion: If a process is executing in its critical section, then no other processes can be executing in their critical sections

         ^–       Distributed mutual exclusion

        ^–       Provide critical region in a distributed environment

       ^–       message passing

      ^–       for example, locking files, locked daemon in UNIX (NFS is stateless, no file-locking at

    –       the NFS level) Algorithms for mutual exclusion

       ^–       Problem: an asynchronous system of N processes

 ^–       processes don’t fail

 ^–       message delivery is reliable; not share variables

 ^–       only one critical region

 ^–       application-level protocol: enter(), resourceAccesses(), exit()

 ^–       Requirements for mutual exclusion

 ^–       Essential

 ^–       [ME1] safety: only one process at a time

 ^–       [ME2] liveness: eventually enter or exit

 ^–       Additional

 ^–       [ME3] happened-before ordering: ordering of enter() is the same as HB ordering

 ^–       Performance evaluation

 ^–       overhead and bandwidth consumption: # of messages sent

 ^–       client delay incurred by a process at entry and exit

 ^–       throughput measured by synchronization delay: delay between one’s exit and next’s entry

 –       A central server algorithm

 ^–       server keeps track of a token—permission to enter critical region

 ^–       a process requests the server for the token

 ^–       the server grants the token if it has the token

 ^–       a process can enter if it gets the token, otherwise waits

 ^–       when done, a process sends release and exits

 –       A central server algorithm: discussion

^–         Properties

 ^–         safety, why?

 ^–         liveness, why?

 ^–         HB ordering not guaranteed, why?

 ^–         Performance

 ^–         enter overhead: two messages (request and grant)

 ^–         enter delay: time between request and grant

 ^–         exit overhead: one message (release)

 ^–         exit delay: none

 ^–         synchronization delay: between release and grant

 ^–         centralized server is the bottleneck

 –       ring-based algorithm

^o     Arrange processes in a logical ring to rotate a token

^o     Wait for the token if it requires to enter the critical section

^o     The ring could be unrelated to the physical configuration

^o     pi sends messages to p(i+1) mod N

^o     when a process requires to enter the critical section, waits for the token

^o     when a process holds the token

^o     If it requires to enter the critical section, it can enter

^o     when a process releases a token (exit), it sends to its neighbor

^o     If it doesn‘t, just immediately forwards the token to its neighbor

–       An algorithm using multicast and logical clocks

^–         Multicast a request message for the token (Ricart and Agrawala [1981]

^–         enter only if all the other processes reply

^–         totally-ordered timestamps: <T, pi >

^–         Each process keeps a state: RELEASED, HELD, WANTED

^–         if all have state = RELEASED, all reply, a process can hold the token and enter

^–         if a process has state = HELD, doesn’t reply until it exits

^–         if more than one process has state = WANTED, process with the lowest timestamp will get all

^–         N-1 replies first

–       An algorithm using multicast: discussion

^–    Properties

^–    safety, why?

^–    liveness, why?

^–    HB ordering, why?

^–    Performance

^–    bandwidth consumption: no token keeps circulating

^–    entry overhead: 2(N-1), why? [with multicast support: 1 + (N -1) = N]

^–    entry delay: delay between request and getting all replies

^–    exit overhead: 0 to N-1 messages

^–    exit delay: none

 o   synchronization delay: delay for 1 message (one last reply from the previous holder) 

–       Maekawa‘s voting algorithm

^–    •Observation: not all peers to grant it access

^–    Only obtain permission from subsets, overlapped by any two processes

^–    •Maekawa‘s approach

^–    subsets Vi,Vj for process Pi, Pj

^–    Pi ∈ Vi, Pj ∈ Vj

^–    Vi ∩ Vj ≠ ∅ , there is at least one common member

^–    subset |Vi|=K, to be fair, each process should have the same size

^–    Pi cannot enter the critical section until it has received all K reply messages

^–    Choose a subset

^–    Simple way (2√N): place processes in a √N by √N matrix and let Vi be the union of the row and column containing Pi

^–    If P1, P2 and P3 concurrently request entry to the critical section, then its possible that each process has received one (itself) out of two replies, and none can proceed

^–    adapted and solved by [Saunders 1987]