Next, we illustrate a classic software-based solution to the critical-section problem known as Peterson’s solution. Because of the way modern computer architectures perform basic machine-language instructions, such as load and store, there are no guarantees that Peterson’s solution will work correctly on such architectures. However, we present the solution because it provides a good algorithmic description of solving the critical-section problem and illustrates some of the complexities involved in designing software that addresses the requirements of mutual exclusion, progress, and bounded waiting.
Peterson’s solution is restricted to two processes that alternate execution between their critical sections and remainder sections. The processes are numbered P0 and P1. For convenience, when presenting Pi, we use Pj to denote the other process; that is, j equals 1 - i.
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