Chapter 5: Process

Synchronization
 Process Synchronization
• Background
• The Critical-Section Problem
• Peterson’s Solution
• Synchronization Hardware
• Mutex Locks
• Semaphores
• Classic Problems of Synchronization
• Monitors
 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.
 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++;
}
 Consumer
while (true) {
while (counter == 0)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
counter--;
/* consume the item in next consumed */
}
 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}
 Race Condition (cont..)
• Race Condition in Critical Section Area Problem
• A race condition is a potential scenario that might happen within a
critical section area. This occurs when different results from the
execution of numerous threads in a crucial region are obtained
depending on the execution order of the threads.

• If the critical section area is regarded as an atomic instruction,

race conditions in certain areas can be avoided. Race problems can
also be avoided by employing locks or atomic variables to
properly synchronize threads.

• Race Condition is Inter Disciplinary approach. It can occur in both

the concepts of Multi Threading, Process Execution, and Critical
Section Area too.
 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
• In concurrent programming, concurrent accesses to shared resources
can lead to unexpected or erroneous behavior, so parts of the program
where the shared resource is accessed are protected. This protected
section is the critical section or critical region. It cannot be executed
by more than one process at a time.
 Critical Section

• General structure of process Pi

 Algorithm for Process Pi
do {

while (turn == j);

critical section
turn = j;
remainder section
} while (true);
 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
 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
 Peterson’s Solution
• Peterson's Solution is a classic software-based solution to the
critical section problem. It is unfortunately not guaranteed to
work on modern hardware, due to vagaries of load and store
operations, but it illustrates a number of important concepts.
• Peterson's solution is based on two processes, P0 and P1,
which alternate between their critical sections and remainder
sections. For convenience of discussion, "this" process is Pi,
and the "other" process is Pj. ( I.e. j = 1 - i )
• Peterson's solution requires two shared data items:
• int turn - Indicates whose turn it is to enter into the critical
section. If turn = = i, then process i is allowed into their critical
section.
• boolean flag[ 2 ] - Indicates when a process wants to enter into
their critical section. When process i wants to enter their critical
section, it sets flag[ i ] to true.
 Algorithm for Process Pi
do {
flag[i] = true;
turn = i;
while (flag[i] && turn = = i);
critical section
flag[i] = false;
remainder section
} while (true);
 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
 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
 Solution to Critical-section Problem Using Locks

do {
acquire lock
critical section
release lock
remainder section
} while (TRUE);
 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”.
 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);
 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.
 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);
 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
Binary Semaphores is called as Mutex Lock
 acquire() and release()
• acquire() {
while (!available)
; /* busy wait */
available = false;
}
• release() {
available = true;
}
• do {
acquire lock
critical section
release lock
remainder section
} while (true);
acquire() and release()
 Semaphore
• A semaphore is a variable or abstract data type used to control access
to a common resource by multiple processes in a concurrent system
such as a multitasking operating system.

• A semaphore is simply a variable. This variable is used to solve critical

section problems and to achieve process synchronization in the multi
processing environment.

• A trivial semaphore is a plain variable that is changed (for example,

incremented or decremented, or toggled) depending on programmer-
defined conditions.
 Semaphore
• Characteristic of Semaphore
• It is a mechanism that can be used to provide synchronization of tasks.
• It is a low-level synchronization mechanism.
• Semaphore will always hold a non-negative integer value.
• Semaphore can be implemented using test operations and interrupts,
which should be executed using file descriptors.
• Types of Semaphores
• The two common kinds of semaphores are
• Counting semaphores
• Binary semaphores.
• Counting Semaphores
• This type of Semaphore uses a count that helps task to be acquired or
released numerous times. If the initial count = 0, the counting
semaphore should be created in the unavailable state.
Semaphore
 Semaphore
• Binary Semaphores
• The binary semaphores are quite similar to counting
semaphores, but their value is restricted to 0 and 1. In this
type of semaphore, the wait operation works only if
semaphore = 1, and the signal operation succeeds when
semaphore= 0. It is easy to implement than counting
semaphores.
Cont..
• Initially, the value of the semaphore is 1. When the
process P1 enters the critical section, the value of semaphore
becomes 0. If P2 would want to enter the critical section at
this time, it wouldn't be able to, since the value of semaphore
is not greater 0. It will have to wait till semaphore value is
greater than 0, and this will happen only once P1 leaves the
critical section and executes the signal operation which
increments the value of the semaphore.
 Semaphore
• Wait Operation
• The wait operation, also called the "P" function, sleep,
decrease or down operation, is the semaphore operation
that controls the entry of a process into critical section.
• If the value of the mutex/semaphore is positive then we
decrease the value of the semaphore and let the process
enter the critical section.
• Note that this function is only called before the process
enters the critical section, and not after it.
 Semaphore
Signal Operation
• The function "V", or the wake-up, increase or up
operation is the same as the signal function, and as we
know, once a process has exited the critical section, we
must update the value of the semaphore so that we can
signal the new processes to be able to access the critical
section.
• For the updation of the value, once the process has exited
the critical section, since we had decreased the value of the
semaphore by 1 in the wait operation, here we simply
increment it.
• Note that this function is added only after the process
exits the critical section and cannot be added before the
process enters the section.
 Semaphore
Example:
 If the value of the semaphore was intially 1, then on the
entering of the process into the critical section, the wait
function would have decremented the value to 0 meaning
that no more processes can access the critical section
(making sure of mutual exclusion -- only in binary
semaphores).
 Once the process exits the critical section, the signal
operation is executed and the value of the semaphore is
incremented by 1, meaning that the critical section can
now be accessed by another process.
 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++;
}
 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:
S1 ;
signal(synch);
P2:
wait(synch);
S2 ;
• Can implement a counting semaphore S as a binary semaphore
 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
 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;
 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);
}
}
 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
 Classical Problems of Synchronization
• Classical problems used to test newly-proposed
synchronization schemes
– Bounded-Buffer Problem
– Readers and Writers Problem
– Dining-Philosophers Problem
 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
• Synchronize producers and consumers
• Producers must block if the buffer is full. Consumers must
block if the buffer is empty. Two counting semaphores can
be used for this.
• Use one semaphore named empty to count the empty slots
in the buffer

Initialise this semaphore to N.

• A producer must wait on this semaphore before writing to
the buffer.
• A consumer will signal this semaphore after reading from
the buffer.
• Use one semaphore named data to count the number of
data items in the buffer.
• Initialise this semaphore to 0.
• A consumer must wait on this semaphore before reading
from the buffer.
• A producer will signal this semaphore after writing to the
buffer.
 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);
 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);
 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
 Readers-Writers Problem
• In the above code, mutex and rw_mutex are semaphores that
are initialized to 1. The mutex semaphore ensures mutual
exclusion and rw_mutex handles the writing mechanism and is
common to the reader and writer process code.

• The variable read count denotes the number of readers

accessing the object. As soon as read count becomes 1, wait
operation is used on rw_mutex . This means that a writer
cannot access the object anymore.

• After the read operation is done, read count is decremented.

When read count becomes 0, signal operation is used on
rw_mutex. So a writer can access the object now.
 Readers-Writers Problem (Cont.)
• The structure of a writer process

do {
wait(rw_mutex);
...
/* writing is performed */
...
signal(rw_mutex);
} while (true);
 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);
 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
 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?
 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.
 Problems with Semaphores
• Incorrect use of semaphore operations:

– signal (mutex) …. wait (mutex)

– wait (mutex) … wait (mutex)

– Omitting of wait (mutex) or signal (mutex) (or both)

• Deadlock and starvation are possible.

 Monitors
• A high-level abstraction that provides a convenient and effective mechanism for
process synchronization
• Abstract data type, internal variables only accessible by code within the
procedure
• Only one process may be active within the monitor at a time
• But not powerful enough to model some synchronization schemes

monitor monitor-name
{
// shared variable declarations
procedure P1 (…) { …. }

procedure Pn (…) {……}

Initialization code (…) { … }

}
}
Schematic view of a Monitor
 Condition Variables
• condition x, y;
• Two operations are allowed on a condition variable:
– x.wait() – a process that invokes the operation is suspended
until x.signal()
– x.signal() – resumes one of processes (if any) that invoked
x.wait()
• If no x.wait() on the variable, then it has no effect on the
variable
Monitor with Condition Variables
 Condition Variables Choices
• If process P invokes x.signal(), and process Q is suspended in
x.wait(), what should happen next?
– Both Q and P cannot execute in paralel. If Q is resumed, then P must wait
• Options include
– Signal and wait – P waits until Q either leaves the monitor or it waits for
another condition
– Signal and continue – Q waits until P either leaves the monitor or it waits
for another condition
– Both have pros and cons – language implementer can decide
– Monitors implemented in Concurrent Pascal compromise
• P executing signal immediately leaves the monitor, Q is resumed
– Implemented in other languages including Mesa, C#, Java
 Monitor Implementation – Condition Variables

• For each condition variable x, we have:

semaphore x_sem; // (initially = 0)

int x_count = 0;

• The operation x.wait can be implemented as:

x_count++;
if (next_count > 0)
signal(next);
else
signal(mutex);
wait(x_sem);
x_count--;
 Monitor Implementation (Cont.)

• The operation x.signal can be implemented as:

if (x_count > 0) {
next_count++;
signal(x_sem);
wait(next);
next_count--;
}
End of Chapter 5