ROBUST CRITICAL SECTION DESIGN IN MULTITHREADED APPLICATIONS

摘要

A multithreaded computer application provides more robust mutually exclusive accesses as instantiations (threads) of a single program, such that deadlock situations are avoided. The application method uses the system primitives to implement system services that provide a 'gate' functionality (Sl, S4, S6, S21, S24, S30) to the functional code for which exclusive access is to be granted. Critical sections still exist, but they are only used for the management of state variables and decisional branching of this 'gate' mechanism. Also, time limit provisions (S15) are implemented to avoid blocking of the not granted threads. The method includes executing the 'exclusive functional code section' outside the critical sections, which avoids a cascading of blocking effects due to a never ending or non-terminating critical section as in the prior art design model.