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

What is the main problem with the fcfs scheme, Question : a) Consider ...

Question : a) Consider table 1.0 below, assume the processes arrived in the order P 1 , P 2 , P 3 , P 4 at time shown and need the indicated burst time (both in milliseconds)

What is meant by demand paging? explain, What is meant by demand paging? Ex...

What is meant by demand paging? Explain. Demand paging is a technique to implement virtual memory. In demand paging simply when a page is required it is brought into memory. As

Is data in a file access sequentially or randomly, Q. Give an instance of ...

Q. Give an instance of an application in which data in a file should be accessed in the following order: a. Sequentially b. Randomly Answer: a. Print the content of

Explain the various methods for handling deadlocks, Explain the various met...

Explain the various methods for handling deadlocks.      A set of processes is deadlocked if every process in the set is waiting for an event that only a process in the

History of operating systems, Operating Systems have evolved tremendously i...

Operating Systems have evolved tremendously in the last few decades. The first approach for building Operating Systems, taken during the 40s through early 60s, was to allow only on

Parent and child process communicate in unix, Parent and Child process comm...

Parent and Child process communicate in unix A child and parent can interact through any of the normal  inter-process communication schemes (pipes, message queues, sockets, s

Explain the benefits of thread over process?, BENEFITS OF THREADS OVER PROC...

BENEFITS OF THREADS OVER PROCESS If implemented correctly after those threads have some advantages of (multi) processes, they take: 1. Less time to create a new thread tha

Define the scheduling in multitasking, Define the Scheduling in Multitaskin...

Define the Scheduling in Multitasking Earlier we learned the concepts and advantages of multitasking. In a system in which one or more tasks( threads or processes) attempt to s

What is contiguous allocation, What is contiguous allocation? Allocati...

What is contiguous allocation? Allocation of a group of consecutive sectors for a one file.

Explain a working of file control block, Explain a working of file control ...

Explain a working of file control block A file control block (FCB) has information about the file, containing ownership, permission, and location of the file contents. The log

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