Chapter 6: Synchronization

Tools

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 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 of race
condition.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.2 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 6.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Critical Section

 General structure of process Pi

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 6.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Interrupt-based Solution
 Entry section: disable interrupts
 Exit section: enable interrupts
 Will this solve the problem?
• What if the critical section is code that runs for an hour?
• Can some processes starve – never enter their critical section.
• What if there are two CPUs?

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Software Solution 1

 Two process solution

 Assume that the load and store machine-
language instructions are atomic; that is, cannot be
interrupted
 The two processes share one variable:
• int turn;
 The variable turn indicates whose turn it is to enter
the critical section
 initially, the value of turn is set to i

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Algorithm for Process Pi

while (true){

while (turn = = j);

/* critical section */

turn = j;

/* remainder section */

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Correctness of the Software Solution

 Mutual exclusion is preserved

Pi enters critical section only if:
turn = i
and turn cannot be both 0 and 1 at the same time
 What about the Progress requirement?
 What about the Bounded-waiting requirement?

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Peterson’s Solution
 Peterson's Solution is a classic software-based
algorithm designed to solve the critical section problem
for two processes.

 It ensures that only one process can access a shared

resource at a time,

 preventing race conditions and ensuring mutual

exclusion.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.10 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 6.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Algorithm for Process Pi

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Correctness of Peterson’s Solution

Explanation:
 Setting Interest: Process i sets its flag[i] to true to indicate its
interest in entering the critical section.
 Yielding Turn: Process i sets turn to j to give the other
process a chance.
 Busy Wait: The while loop ensures mutual exclusion. Process
i waits until either process j is not interested (flag[j] == false) or
it's its turn (turn == i).
 Entering Critical Section: If the loop condition is false,
process i enters the critical section.
 Releasing Critical Section: After exiting the critical section,
process i sets its flag[i] to false, allowing the other process to
enter.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Correctness of Peterson’s Solution

 Provable that the three CS (critical section) 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 6.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Peterson’s Solution and Modern Architecture

 Although useful for demonstrating an algorithm,

 Peterson’s Solution is not guaranteed to work on modern
architectures.
• To improve performance, processors and/or compilers
may reorder operations that have no dependencies

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 present three hardware instructions that provide support for solving
the critical-section problem.

HARDWARE SUPPORT FOR

SYNCHRONIZATION

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Memory Barrier

 Memory barriers are synchronization primitives used in concurrent

programming to ensure that memory operations are executed in a
specific order, even when optimizations or hardware reordering
might otherwise change the order of execution.

 Memory models may be either:

• Strongly ordered – where a memory modification of one
processor is immediately visible to all other processors.
• Weakly ordered – where a memory modification of one
processor may not be immediately visible to all other
processors.

 A memory barrier is an instruction that forces any change in

memory to be propagated (made visible) to all other processors.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Memory Barrier Example
 Returning to the example of slides 6.17 - 6.18
 We could add a memory barrier to the following instructions to
ensure Thread 1 outputs 100:
 Thread 1 now performs
while (!flag)
memory_barrier();
print x
 Thread 2 now performs
x = 100;
memory_barrier();
flag = true
 For Thread 1 we are guaranteed that that the value of flag is
loaded before the value of x.
 For Thread 2 we ensure that the assignment to x occurs before
the assignment flag.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.18 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 6.19 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 6.20 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 6.21 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 6.22 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 6.23 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 6.24 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 6.25 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 6.26 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 6.27 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 6.28 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 6.29 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 6.30 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 6.31 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.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 6.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 End of Chapter 6

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