Process Synchronization
This chapter continues our discussion in the previous chapter, Process Execution, and our main focus will be on process synchronization. Control mechanisms in multi-process programs are different from the control techniques we met in multi-threaded programs. It is not just the memory which differs; there are other factors that you cannot find in a multi-threaded program, and they exist in a multi-process environment.
Despite threads that are bound to a process, processes can live freely on any machine, with any operating system, located anywhere within a network as big as the internet. As you might imagine, things become complicated. It will not be easy to synchronize a number of processes in such a distributed system.
This chapter is dedicated to process synchronization happening in just one machine. In other words, it mainly talks about single-host synchronization and the techniques around it. We discuss briefly the process synchronization in...