Fast, Centralized Detection and Resolution of Distributed Deadlocks in the Generalized Model

• Authors: Soojung Lee
• Venue: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
• Year: 2004

In the literature, only a few studies have been performed on the distributed deadlock detection and resolution problem in the generalized request model. Most of the studies are based on the diffusing computation technique where propagation of probes and backward propagation of replies are required to detect deadlock. The replies carry the dependency information between processes for the initiator of the algorithm to determine deadlock. Since fast detection of deadlock is critical, we take a centralized approach that removes the need of backward propagation of replies, but sends the dependency information directly to the initiator of the algorithm. This enables reduction of time cost for deadlock detection to half of that of the existing distributed algorithms. The algorithm is extended to handle concurrent executions in order to further improve deadlock detection time, whereas the current algorithms focus only on a single execution. Simulation experiments are performed to see the effectiveness of this centralized approach as compared to previous distributed algorithms. It is found that our algorithm shows better results in several performance metrics especially in deadlock latency and algorithm execution time.