Deadlock-Free Systems for a Bounded Number of Processes

Consider a computer system in which different types of serially reusable resources are shared by several classes of processes. We assume that each process in a process class has the same known maximum claim (i.e., the maximum resource requirement), but that the actual sequence of requests is unknown. Our resource manager uses the "expedient policy" in granting requests for resources, under the constraint that at most K (a constant) processes can reside in the system at any time.