The geometry of semaphore programs

  • Authors:
  • Scott D. Carson;Paul F. Reynolds, Jr.

  • Affiliations:
  • Univ. of Maryland, College Park;Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
  • Year:
  • 1987

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Synchronization errors in concurrent programs are notoriously difficult to find and correct. Deadlock, partial deadlock, and unsafeness are conditions that constitute such errors.A model of concurrent semaphore programs based on multidimensional, solid geometry is presented. While previously reported geometric models are restricted to two-process mutual exclusion problems, the model described here applies to a broader class of synchronization problems. The model is shown to be exact for systems composed of an arbitrary, yet fixed number of concurrent processes, each consisting of a straight line sequence of arbitrarily ordered semaphore operations.