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Another solution of the mutual exclusion problem
Kowaltowski T., Palma A. Information Processing Letters19 (3):145-146,1984.Type:Article
Date Reviewed: May 1 1985

This paper purports to be another solution to the Mutual Exclusion Problem first posed by Dijkstra [1]. The solution is short, simple, and gives fair access to all processes. It uses an extra process that schedules all accesses to the critical section. Herein lies my objection to the “solution.” Dijkstra required that “the solution must be symmetric between the N processes. . .” and “if any of the computers is stopped away from its critical region, this is not allowed to lead to potential blocking of the others.” This solution violates both of these constraints. It is not symmetric (due to the presence of a global scheduler) and, if the scheduler is stopped, all others deadlock. Dijkstra’s goal was a completely distributed scheduling scheme; the authors fail to see this aspect of the problem. For a solution that gives FIFO service without using an extra process, see Lamport’s paper [2].

Reviewer:  James R. McGraw Review #: CR109128
1) Dijkstra, E. W.Solution of a problem in concurrent programming control, Commun. ACM 8 (1965), 569. See <CR> 7 (Jan.-Feb. 1966), Rev. 9023.
2) Lamport, L.A new solution to Dijkstra’s concurrent programming problem, Commun. ACM 17 (Aug. 1974), 453–455. See <CR> 16, 2 (Feb. 1975), Rev. 27,849.
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