Chapter 6: Synchronization

Tools

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Outline
 Background
 The Critical-Section Problem
 Peterson’s Solution
 Hardware Support for Synchronization
 Mutex Locks
 Semaphores
 Classical Synchronization Problem

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Objectives
 Describe the critical-section problem and illustrate a
race condition
 Illustrate hardware solutions to the critical-section
problem using memory barriers, compare-and-swap
operations, and atomic variables
 Demonstrate how mutex locks, semaphores,
monitors, and condition variables can be used to
solve the critical section problem
 Evaluate tools that solve the critical-section problem
in low-, Moderate-, and high-contention scenarios

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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
 We illustrated in chapter 4 the problem when we considered the
Bounded Buffer problem with use of a counter that is updated
concurrently by the producer and consumer,. Which lead to race
condition.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Race Condition
 Processes P0 and P1 are creating child processes using the fork()
system call
 Race condition on kernel variable next_available_pid which
represents the next available process identifier (pid)

 Unless there is a mechanism to prevent P0 and P1 from accessing the

variable next_available_pid the same pid could be assigned to
two different processes!

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 – 10th Edition 6.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Critical Section

 General structure of process Pi

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 Critical-Section Problem (Cont.)
Requirements for 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 process 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 – 10th Edition 6.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Peterson’s Solution
 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 – 10th Edition 6.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Algorithm for Process Pi

while (true){

flag[i] = true;
turn = j;
while (flag[j] && turn = = j)
;

/* critical section */

flag[i] = false;

/* remainder section */

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Correctness of Peterson’s Solution

 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 – 10th Edition 6.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Synchronization Hardware
 Many systems provide hardware support for implementing the
critical section code.
 Uniprocessors – could disable interrupts
• Currently running code would execute without preemption
• Generally too inefficient on multiprocessor systems
 Operating systems using this not broadly scalable

 We will look at three forms of hardware support:

1. Hardware instructions

2. Atomic variables

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Hardware Instructions
 Special hardware instructions that allow us to either
test-and-modify the content of a word, or to swap the
contents of two words atomically (uninterruptedly.)
• Test-and-Set instruction
• Compare-and-Swap instruction

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 The test_and_set Instruction

 Definition
boolean test_and_set (boolean
*target)
{
boolean rv = *target;
*target = true;
return rv:
}
 Properties
• Executed atomically
• Returns the original value of passed parameter
• Set the new value of passed parameter to true

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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);

 Does it solve the critical-section problem?

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 The 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;
}
 Properties
• Executed atomically
• Returns the original value of passed parameter value
• Set the variable value the value of the passed parameter
new_value but only if *value == expected is true. That is, the
swap takes place only under this condition.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Solution using compare_and_swap
 Shared integer lock initialized to 0;
 Solution:
while (true){
while (compare_and_swap(&lock, 0, 1) != 0)
; /* do nothing */

/* critical section */

lock = 0;

/* remainder section */
}

 Does it solve the critical-section problem?

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Atomic Variables
 Typically, instructions such as compare-and-swap are used
as building blocks for other synchronization tools.
 One tool is an atomic variable that provides atomic
(uninterruptible) updates on basic data types such as
integers and booleans.
 For example:
• Let sequence be an atomic variable
• Let increment() be operation on the atomic variable
sequence
• The Command:
increment(&sequence);
ensures sequence is incremented without interruption:

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Atomic Variables
 The increment() function can be implemented as follows:

void increment(atomic_int *v)

{
int temp;
do {
temp = *v;
}
while (temp != (compare_and_swap(v,temp,temp+1));
}

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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
• Boolean variable indicating if lock is available or not
 Protect a critical section by
• First acquire() a lock
• Then release() the lock
 Calls to acquire() and release() must be atomic
• Usually implemented via hardware atomic instructions such as
compare-and-swap.
 But this solution requires busy waiting
• This lock therefore called a spinlock

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Solution to CS Problem Using Mutex Locks

while (true) {
acquire lock

critical section

release lock

remainder section
}

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Semaphore
 Synchronization tool that provides more sophisticated ways
(than Mutex locks) for processes 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 – 10th Edition 6.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Semaphore (Cont.)
 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 implement a counting semaphore S as a binary
semaphore
 With semaphores we can solve various synchronization
problems

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Semaphore Usage Example
 Solution to the CS Problem
• Create a semaphore “mutex” initialized to 1
wait(mutex);
CS
signal(mutex);
 Consider P1 and P2 that with two statements S1 and S2 and
the requirement that S1 to happen before S2
• Create a semaphore “synch” initialized to 0
P1:
S1;
signal(synch);
P2:
wait(synch);
S2;

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 – 10th Edition 6.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Problems with Semaphores

 Incorrect use of semaphore operations:

• signal(mutex) …. wait(mutex)

• wait(mutex) … wait(mutex)

• Omitting of wait (mutex) and/or signal (mutex)

 These – and others – are examples of what can occur when

semaphores and other synchronization tools are used
incorrectly.

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 End of Chapter 6

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018