Fair Solution to the Reader-Writer-Problem with Semaphores only

H. Ballhausen

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Fair Solution to the Reader-Writer-Problem with Semaphores only

H. Ballhausen

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Abstract

The reader-writer-problem is a standard problem in concurrent programming. A resource is shared by several processes which need either inclusive reading or exclusive writing access. The known solutions to this problem typically involve a number of global counters and queues. Here a very simple algorithm is presented which needs only two semaphores for synchronisation and no other global objects. The approach yields a fair solution without starving.

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H. Ballhausen. 2003-03-08. Fair Solution to the Reader-Writer-Problem with Semaphores only. https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0303005

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