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In computer science, a semaphore is a variable or abstract data type used to control access to a common resource by multiple threads and avoid critical section problems in a concurrent system such as a multitasking operating system. Semaphores are a type of synchronization primitive. A trivial semaphore is a plain variable that is changed (for ...
A mutex is a locking mechanism that sometimes uses the same basic implementation as the binary semaphore. However, they differ in how they are used. While a binary semaphore may be colloquially referred to as a mutex, a true mutex has a more specific use-case and definition, in that only the task that locked the mutex is supposed to unlock it ...
In computing, a futex (short for "fast userspace mutex") is a kernel system call that programmers can use to implement basic locking, or as a building block for higher-level locking abstractions such as semaphores and POSIX mutexes or condition variables. A futex consists of a kernel-space wait queue that is attached to an atomic integer in ...
With priority ceiling protocol, the shared mutex process (that runs the operating system code) has a characteristic (high) priority of its own, which is assigned to the task of locking the mutex. This works well, provided the other high-priority task(s) that tries to access the mutex does not have a priority higher than the ceiling priority.
To enter a critical section, a thread must obtain a semaphore, which it releases on leaving the section. Other threads are prevented from entering the critical section at the same time as the original thread, but are free to gain control of the CPU and execute other code, including other critical sections that are protected by different semaphores.
Tokens and mutual exclusion (mutex) mechanisms are locks.Unlike mutexes, tokens do not exclude other threads from accessing the resource while they are blocked or asleep. A thread sharing resources with other threads can be stopped and started for a variety of reasons
Most operating systems (including Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD) use a hybrid approach called "adaptive mutex". The idea is to use a spinlock when trying to access a resource locked by a currently-running thread, but to sleep if the thread is not currently running. (The latter is always the case on single-processor systems.) [8]
In computer science, an event (also called event semaphore) is a type of synchronization mechanism that is used to indicate to waiting processes when a particular condition has become true. An event is an abstract data type with a boolean state and the following operations: