DeadLock-lec3

1.1 Deadlock Avoidance
Deadlock-prevention algorithms, as discussed in Section 7.4, prevent deadlocks by restraining how requests can be made. The restraints ensure that at least one of the necessary conditions for deadlock cannot occur and, hence, that deadlocks cannot hold. Possible side effects of preventing deadlocks by this method, however, are low device utilization and reduced system throughput.
An alternative method for avoiding deadlocks is to require additional information about how resources are to be requested. For example, in a system with one tape drive and one printer, the system might need to know that process P will request first the tape drive and then the printer before releasing both resources, whereas process Q will request first the printer and then the tape drive.
The various algorithms that use this approach differ in the amount and type of information required. The simplest and most useful model requires that each process declare the maximum number of resources of each type that it may need. Given this a priori information, it is possible to construct an algorithm that ensures that the system will never enter a deadlocked state. Such an algorithm defines the deadlock-avoidance approach. A deadlock-avoidance algorithm dynamically examines the resource-allocation state to ensure that a circular- wait condition can never exist. The resource-allocation state is defined by the number of available and allocated resources and the maximum demands of the processes. In the following sections, we explore two deadlock-avoidance algorithms.