Operating Systems · Concurrency

Deadlock

A cycle of threads each waiting on a lock another one holds, so none of them can proceed.

Also known as: circular wait, deadlock prevention, deadlock avoidance, resource allocation graph.

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Learn first

• Locks and mutual exclusion: A lock that lets only one thread at a time execute a critical section.

Related topics

• Classic synchronization problems: Named puzzles, producer-consumer, readers-writers, dining philosophers, that stress-test a synchronization design.