Concurrency and synchronization

The central question

How can concurrent activities cooperate without corrupting shared state?

First half

Race conditions, interleavings, critical sections, atomic operations and mutexes.

Second half

Semaphores, condition variables and monitors; producer–consumer and dining philosophers.

What you should be able to do

• Trace an interleaving that causes a race condition.
• Explain how synchronization controls access to shared state.

A concrete example

Trace two threads updating a shared counter, then examine a synchronized version.

Reading reference

Operating System Concepts, 10th edition: Chapters 6–7. We use selected sections rather than every slide in each chapter.

Lecture materials

Read the Week 3 chapter with classroom analogies, worked interleavings and optional C practice.

Download lecture slides (PDF, 86 slides)