Modeling and Analysis of Dekker-Based Mutual Exclusion Algorithms

Mutual exclusion is a fundamental problem in concurrent/parallel/distributed systems. The first pure-software solution to this problem for two processes, which is not based on hardware instructions like test-and-set, was proposed in 1965 by Th.J. Dekker and communicated by E.W. Dijkstra. The correct...

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Veröffentlicht in:Computers (Basel) Jg. 13; H. 6; S. 133
Hauptverfasser: Nigro, Libero, Cicirelli, Franco, Pupo, Francesco
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2024
Schlagworte:
Algorithms
Analysis
Concurrency
Dekker’s basic algorithm and variants
Determinism
Distributed processing (Computers)
Electronic data processing
Explosions
formal modeling
memory models
Methods
Modelling
mutual exclusion
Reasoning
tournament-based algorithms
Variables
Italy
ISSN:2073-431X, 2073-431X
Online-Zugang:Volltext
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Zusammenfassung:Mutual exclusion is a fundamental problem in concurrent/parallel/distributed systems. The first pure-software solution to this problem for two processes, which is not based on hardware instructions like test-and-set, was proposed in 1965 by Th.J. Dekker and communicated by E.W. Dijkstra. The correctness of this algorithm has generally been studied under the strong memory model, where the read and write operations on a memory cell are atomic or indivisible. In recent years, some variants of the algorithm have been proposed to make it RW-safe when using the weak memory model, which makes it possible, e.g., for multiple read operations to occur simultaneously to a write operation on the same variable, with the read operations returning (flickering) a non-deterministic value. This paper proposes a novel approach to formal modeling and reasoning on a mutual exclusion algorithm using Timed Automata and the Uppaal tool, and it applies this approach through exhaustive model checking to conduct a thorough analysis of the Dekker’s algorithm and some of its variants proposed in the literature. This paper aims to demonstrate that model checking, although necessarily limited in the scalability of the number N of the processes due to the state explosions problem, is effective yet powerful for reasoning on concurrency and process action interleaving, and it can provide significant results about the correctness and robustness of the basic version and variants of the Dekker’s algorithm under both the strong and weak memory models. In addition, the properties of these algorithms are also carefully studied in the context of a tournament-based binary tree for N≥2 processes.
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ISSN:2073-431X
2073-431X
DOI:10.3390/computers13060133