Explain the circumstances under which os use mutexes, Operating System

Assignment Help:

Q. Give the reasons why Windows XP, Solaris and Linux implement multiple locking mechanisms. Explain the circumstances under which they use mutexes, spinlocks, semaphores, adaptive mutexes and condition variables. In every case explain why the mechanism is needed.

Answer: These operating systems offer different locking mechanisms depending on the application developers' needs. Spinlocks are helpful for multiprocessor systems where a thread can run in a busy-loop (for a short period of time) rather than incurring the overhead of being put in a sleep queue. Mutexes are valuable for locking resources. Solaris 2 utilizes adaptive mutexes meaning that the mutex is implemented with a spin lock on multiprocessor machines. Semaphores as well as condition variables are more appropriate tools for synchronization when a resource should be held for a long period of time, since spinning is inefficient for a long duration.


Related Discussions:- Explain the circumstances under which os use mutexes

Comparing, Compare 2 different operating systems.

Compare 2 different operating systems.

Explain what is semaphores, Explain what semaphores are, their usage, imple...

Explain what semaphores are, their usage, implementation given to avoid busy waiting and binary semaphores. Semaphore definition Usage for mutual exclusion and process synch

Write a note on threads, Question 1 Explain (a) tightly coupled systems   ...

Question 1 Explain (a) tightly coupled systems                               (b) Loosely coupled system Question 2 Describe the RPC model Question 3 Write a note o

Management Information Systems, Select any business process within this fir...

Select any business process within this firm, describe it as a set of steps then fill the following table (flow, information, sender and receivern #Minimum 100 words accepted#

Write a program to synchronize the agent, The Cigarette-Smokers difficulty ...

The Cigarette-Smokers difficulty Consider a system with three smoker processes and one agent process. Every smoker continuously rolls a cigarette and then smokes it. But to roll as

Pages into physical memory, For reading, most operating systems use demand ...

For reading, most operating systems use demand paging. This means that pages are only read from the disk into physical memory when they are needed. In the page table, there is a re

THREADS, advantage and dis advantage of threads

advantage and dis advantage of threads

What are files and explain the access methods for files, What are files and...

What are files and explain the access methods for files? File definition Attributes, operations and types Direct access Sequential access with diagram Other access

What is the translation look aside buffer (tlb), Translation Look aside Buf...

Translation Look aside Buffer In a cached system, the base addresses of the last few indexed pages is maintained in registers named the TLB that adds in faster lookup. TLB has

Write Your Message!

Captcha
Free Assignment Quote

Assured A++ Grade

Get guaranteed satisfaction & time on delivery in every assignment order you paid with us! We ensure premium quality solution document along with free turntin report!

All rights reserved! Copyrights ©2019-2020 ExpertsMind IT Educational Pvt Ltd