🔒 CS330: Operating Systems

What is the primary purpose of Peterson's solution in the context of process synchronization?

How are counting semaphores utilized to control resource access?

How can we prevent deadlock in the Dining Philosophers problem using semaphores?

How can race conditions be mitigated in an operating system?

What is a semaphore in operating systems?

Which condition must be met for deadlock to occur?

What does a semaphore initialized to 1 typically represent?

What is mutual exclusion?

Which is NOT a condition necessary for deadlock?

In the context of process synchronization, what is busy waiting?

What does it mean for a solution to the critical section problem to satisfy the condition of mutual exclusion for two processes P1 and P2? Also, explain why disabling interrupts cannot be a general solution to the critical section problem (give two reasons).

What is the producer-consumer problem? Describe how semaphores can be used to solve this problem. Include the semaphores needed and their initial values.

Explain the three requirements that any solution to the critical section problem must satisfy: Mutual Exclusion, Progress, and Bounded Waiting.

What is a monitor in concurrent programming? How does it differ from semaphores in terms of ease of use and error prevention?

Consider two processes P1 and P2 executing concurrently and sharing a semaphore S, which is initialized to 0. The semaphore operations in the processes appear as shown below:

a) Which one of the following is true? (4 marks)

• (i) S1 and S2 will execute in any order
• (ii) S1 will always execute before S2
• (iii) S1 will always execute after S2
• (iv) P1 and P2 will be deadlocked

b) Explain your answer with reasoning. (4 marks)

c) What would happen if S was initialized to 1 instead of 0? (4 marks)