Mutual Exclusion

A way of making sure that if one process is using a shared modifiable data, the other processes will be excluded from doing the same thing.

Formally, while one process executes the shared variable, all other processes desiring to do so at the same time moment should be kept waiting; when that process has finished executing the shared variable, one of the processes waiting; while that process has finished executing the shared variable, one of the processes waiting to do so should be allowed to proceed. In this fashion, each process executing the shared data (variables) excludes all others from doing so simultaneously. This is called Mutual Exclusion.

Note that mutual exclusion needs to be enforced only when processes access shared modifiable data - when processes are performing operations that do not conflict with one another they should be allowed to proceed concurrently.

Mutual Exclusion Conditions:

If we could arrange matters such that no two processes were ever in their critical sections simultaneously, we could avoid race conditions. We need four conditions to hold to have a good solution for the critical section problem (mutual exclusion).

• No two processes may at the same moment inside their critical sections.
• No assumptions are made about relative speeds of processes or number of CPUs.
• No process should outside its critical section should block other processes.
• No process should wait arbitrary long to enter its critical section.