1. Welcome
2. Fall 2020
3. CS3650 - Computer Systems
4. 3650 notes
5. 08 threads
6. Concurrency Review

Review Data Race & Deadlocks

Conditions for a data race:

• Concurrent execution of two processes / threads.
• Shared data that both processes access (read or write)
• At least one process writes

Locks and Data Races:

• A lock stops concurrent execution right when a data race would otherwise occur.

Conditions for a deadlock:

• Circular wait.

Avoiding deadlock:

• Never hold more than one lock.
• Lock ordering.

Semaphores

A semaphore is an integer and two associated operations.

sem_wait: Attempt to decrement, but if this would bring the value below zero, block instad.

sem_post: Increment the semaphore. If there are processes blocked on the semaphore, give them a chance to try decrementing.

So if we start with a value > 0, that allows sem_wait to restrict access to a resource to that many processes. For the specific value 1, this is a lock.

If we start with a value of zero, processes waiting on the semaphore block immediately and can be woken up by a post operation.

Virtual Memory and Fork: A Review

• Draw the virtual memory diagram.
• Allocate some shared memory.
• Fork.
• Point out that shared memory is shared, and non-shared writable memory soon isn't.