Abstract
The author describes where, when, and how Edsger Dijkstra presented to him the problem of mutual exclusion for two processes as an open problem, and how he solved this problem within a few days. Furthermore, some variants of solutions are described with some emphasis on fairness and finally, a new algorithm for any number of processes is presented.
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Notes
- 1.
Paper presented at Electrologica X8 symposium, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Leiden. March 24, 2018.
- 2.
Dijkstra, Edsger W. 1963a. An ALGOL 60 translator for the X1. Annual Review in Automatic Programming 3:329–345; Dijkstra, Edsger W. 1963b. Making a translator for ALGOL 60. Annual Review in Automatic Programming 3:347–356; Kruseman Aretz, Frans E.J. 2003. The Dijkstra-Zonneveld ALGOL 60 compiler for the Electrologica X1. CWI Report SEN-N301. Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica. Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Naur, Peter, ed. 1960. J.W. Backus, F.L. Bauer, J. Green, C. Katz, J. McCarthy, A.J. Perlis, H. Rutishauser, K. Samelson, B. Vauquois, J.H. Wegstein, A. van Wijngaarden, M. Woodger, Report on the algorithmic language ALGOL 60. Num. Mathematik 2:106–136.
- 3.
Dijkstra, Edsger W. 1962. Over de sequentialiteit van procesbeschrijvingen (Dutch 1962–64) [EWD35]. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd00xx/EWD35.PDF English version: About the sequentiality of process descriptions, at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/translations/EWD35-English.html.
- 4.
Dijkstra, Edsger W. 1959a. Communication with an automatic computer. [PhD Thesis. October 28, 1959. Universiteit van Amsterdam]. Excelsior, Rijswijk.
- 5.
Dijkstra (1962), sequentialiteit van procesbeschrijvingen, page 17; Dijkstra, Edsger W. 1964. Cooperating sequential processes, [EWD123] http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd01xx/EWD123.PDF; Dijkstra, Edsger W. 1965a. Co-operating sequential processes. In Programming languages, edited F. Genuys, 43–112. New York: Academic Press.
- 6.
Dijkstra (1962), sequentialiteit van procesbeschrijvingen.
- 7.
Dijkstra (1962), sequentialiteit van procesbeschrijvingen, page 10, quoted from the English translation. “De probleemstelling was inmiddels wel drastisch veranderd. In 1959 was het de vraag of de beschreven communicatiemogelijkheid tussen twee machines het mogelijk maakte om twee machines zodanig te koppelen, dat de uitvoering van de critische trajecten elkaar in de tijd wederzijds uitsloten. In 1962 werd een veel wijdere groep problemen bekeken en werd bovendien de vraagstelling veranderd in “Welke communicatiemogelijkheden tussen machines zijn gewenst, om dit soort spelletjes zo sierlijk mogelijk te spelen?”
- 8.
Dijkstra (1964), Cooperating sequential processes.
- 9.
Dijkstra (1964), Cooperating sequential processes; Dijkstra (1965a), Co-operating sequential processes.
- 10.
Dijkstra (1962), sequentialiteit van procesbeschrijvingen.
- 11.
Doran, R.W., and L.K. Thomas. 1980. Variants of the software solution to mutual exclusion. Information Processing Letters 10(4):206–208.
- 12.
Knuth, Donald E. 1966. Additional comments on a problem in concurrent programming control. Communications ACM 9(5):321–322.
- 13.
Bruijn, Nicolaas G. de. 1967. Additional comments on a problem in concurrent programming control. Communications ACM 10(3):137–138.
- 14.
Peterson, G.L. 1981. Myths about the mutual exclusion problem. Information Processing Letters 12(3):115–116; Raynal, M. 1986. Algorithms for mutual exclusion. Oxford: North Oxford Academic.
- 15.
Dijkstra (1965a), Co-operating sequential processes; Dijkstra, Edsger W. 1965b. Solution of a problem in concurrent programming control. Communications ACM 8(9):569; Knuth (1966), a problem in concurrent programming control; Bruijn, de (1967), problem in concurrent programming; Peterson (1981), Myths; Lamport, Leslie. 1974. A new solution of Dijkstra’s concurrent programming problem. Communications ACM 17(8):453–455.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Gerard Alberts and Peter van Emde Boas for their encouragements and valuable comments.
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Dekker, T.J.(. (2022). History of Dekker’s Algorithm for Mutual Exclusion. In: Alberts, G., Groote, J.F. (eds) Tales of Electrologica . History of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13033-5_6
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