The mutual exclusion problem: part I—a theory of interprocess communication

  • Authors:
  • Leslie Lamport

  • Affiliations:
  • Digital Equipment Corp., Palo Alto, CA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the ACM (JACM)
  • Year:
  • 1986

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Abstract

A novel formal theory of concurrent systems that does not assume any atomic operations is introduced. The execution of a concurrent program is modeled as an abstract set of operation executions with two temporal ordering relations: “precedence” and “can causally affect”. A primitive interprocess communication mechanism is then defined. In Part II, the mutual exclusion is expressed precisely in terms of this model, and solutions using the communication mechanism are given.