Abstract

Abstract We present an adaptive algorithm for N-process mutual exclusion under read/write atomicity in which all busy waiting is by local spinning. In our algorithm, each process p performs O(k) remote memory references to enter and exit its critical section, where k is the maximum "point contention " experienced by p. The space complexity of our algorithm is \Theta (N), which is clearly optimal. Our algorithm is the first mutual exclusion algorithm under read/write atomicity that is adaptive when time complexity is measured by counting remote memory references. All previous so-called adaptive mutual exclusion algorithms employ busy-waiting loops that can generate an unbounded number of remote memory references. Thus, they have unbounded time complexity under this measure.

Citations