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Detecting deadlocks in concurrent systems

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CONCUR'98 Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 1998)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1466))

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Abstract

We study deadlocks using geometric methods based on generalized process graphs [Dij68], i.e., cubical complexes or Higher-Dimensional Automata (HDA) [Pra91,vG91,GJ92,Gun94], describing the semantics of the concurrent system of interest. A new algorithm is described and fully assessed, both theoretically and practically and compared with more well-known traversing techniques. An implementation is available, applied to a toy language. This algorithm not only computes the deadlocking states of a concurrent system but also the so-called “unsafe region” which consists of the states which will eventually lead to a deadlocking state. Its basis is a characterization of deadlocks using dual geometric properties of the “forbidden region”.

Work done partly while at Ecole Normale Supérieure and while visiting Aalborg University.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Mathematics, Aalborg University, DK-9220, Aalborg

    Lisbeth Fajstrup & Martin Raußen

  2. LETI (CEA - Technologies Avancées) DEIN-SLA, CEA F91191, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex

    Eric Goubault

Authors
  1. Lisbeth Fajstrup
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  2. Eric Goubault
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  3. Martin Raußen
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Editor information

Davide Sangiorgi Robert de Simone

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Fajstrup, L., Goubault, E., Raußen, M. (1998). Detecting deadlocks in concurrent systems. In: Sangiorgi, D., de Simone, R. (eds) CONCUR'98 Concurrency Theory. CONCUR 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1466. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055632

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055632

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-64896-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68455-8

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