GATE - 2018 | OS | Consider the following solution to the producer-consumer synchronization

GATE - 2018 [Operating System]

Question:

Consider the following solution to the producer-consumer synchronization problem. The shared buffer size is N. Three semaphores empty, full and mutex are defined with respective initial values of 0, N and 1. Semaphore empty denotes the number of available slots in the buffer, for the consumer to read from. Semaphore full denotes the number of available slots in the buffer, for the producer to write to. The placeholder variables, denoted by P, Q, R and S, in the code below can be assigned either empty or full. The valid semaphore operations are: wait() and sigmal().

Which one of the following assignments to P, Q, R and S will yield the correct solution?

A	P: full, Q: full, R: empty, S: empty
B	P: empty, Q: empty, R: full, S: full
C	P: full, Q: empty, R: empty, S: full
D	P: empty, Q: full, R: full, S: empty

 

Solution:

Option (C) is correct.

P=full, Q=empty, R=empty, S=full
Initial: mutex = 1
empty = 0
full = N

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Given,
Empty = 0
Full = N
Mutex = 1

Since value of empty semaphore is 0, so you can not wait empty semaphore in first attempt.

Note – empty semaphore denotes the number of filled slots, so producer process must deal with empty and mutex semaphores. full semaphore denotes the number of empty slots so consumer process must deal with full and mutex semaphores.

Option (A) causes starvation.
OPtion (B) causes starvation.
Option (D) since number of filled slots are 0 initially denoted by empty semaphore, so consumer process can not consume. So, this implementation is wrong.

Only P: empty, Q: full, R: full, S: empty is correct order to ensure deadlock-free and starvation free implementation.

Thank You