Revisiting deadlock prevention: a probabilistic approach

Abstract

We revisit the deadlock-prevention problem by focusing on priority digraphs instead of the traditional wait-for digraphs. This has allowed us to formulate deadlock prevention in terms of prohibiting the occurrence of directed cycles even in the most general of wait models (the so-called AND-OR model, in which prohibiting wait-for directed cycles is generally overly restrictive). For a particular case in which the priority digraphs are somewhat simplified, we introduce a Las Vegas probabilistic mechanism for resource granting and analyze its key aspects in detail.