A Priority Dynamics for Generalized Drinking Philosophers.pdfVIP

A Priority Dynamics for Generalized Drinking Philosophers Valmir C. Barbosa Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, COPPE Caixa Postal 68511, 21945-970 Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brazil valmir@cos.ufrj.br Mario R. F. Benevides Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, COPPE and Instituto de Matematica Caixa Postal 68511, 21945-970 Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brazil mario@cos.ufrj.br Ayru L. Oliveira Filho Centro de Pesquisas de Energia Eletrica|CEPEL Caixa Postal 68007, 21944-970 Rio de Janeiro - RJ, Brazil ayru@cepel.br Abstract We consider a generalization of the drinking philosophers problem, called GDrPP, in which pro- cesses may issue AND-OR requests for resources, as opp osed to the AND requests of the original formulation. For GDrPP, we intro duce a basic priority dynamics that can b e regarded as generaliz- ing the edge-reversal priority dynamics underlying the classical solution to the original formulation. The novel priority dynamics is based on new results on the graphs that re ect waits due to AND-OR requests. Keywords: Drinking philosophers problem, AND-OR resource requests, concurrency, distributed computing, op erating systems. 1 1. Intro duction We consider a set P of pro cesses and a set R of resources that can only b e used by pro cesses under the condition of mutual exclusion.