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Concept
Lamport's bakery algorithm
Summary
Lamport's bakery algorithm is a computer algorithm devised by computer scientist Leslie Lamport, as part of his long study of the formal correctness of concurrent systems, which is intended to improve the safety in the usage of shared resources among multiple threads by means of mutual exclusion.
In computer science, it is common for multiple threads to simultaneously access the same resources. Data corruption can occur if two or more threads try to write into the same memory location, or if one thread reads a memory location before another has finished writing into it. Lamport's bakery algorithm is one of many mutual exclusion algorithms designed to prevent concurrent threads entering critical sections of code concurrently to eliminate the risk of data corruption.
Lamport envisioned a bakery with a numbering machine at its entrance so each customer is given a unique number. Numbers increase by one as customers enter the store. A global counter displays the number of the customer that is currently being served. All other customers must wait in a queue until the baker finishes serving the current customer and the next number is displayed. When the customer is done shopping and has disposed of his or her number, the clerk increments the number, allowing the next customer to be served. That customer must draw another number from the numbering machine in order to shop again.
According to the analogy, the "customers" are threads, identified by the letter i, obtained from a global variable.
Due to the limitations of computer architecture, some parts of Lamport's analogy need slight modification. It is possible that more than one thread will get the same number n when they request it; this cannot be avoided (without first solving the mutual exclusion problem, which is the goal of the algorithm). Therefore, it is assumed that the thread identifier i is also a priority. A lower value of i means a higher priority and threads with higher priority will enter the critical section first.
Official source
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