Deadlock

Tags

comp-arch

Is a problem in multi-threaded systems where the system cannot make any forward progress because all the threads are blocked or sleeping.

For low-priority systems such as user OSs or it may be more efficient to allow deadlocks however for critical systems (example Apollo 13) we need a system that tracks, breaks or prevents deadlocks.

The OS can interrupt any system call to potentially break a deadlock. It can also make some files read-only to make them shareable across threads.