Deadlock Avoidance: A Dynamic Programming Approach

Deadlock is an indefinite blocking condition, occurs when two or more processes are each waiting for each other to release a resource. One way to overcome the deadlock problem in operating system environment is deadlock avoidance using Bankers safety algorithm. Safety algorithm decides whether the system will be in safe or unsafe state, on the basis of processes needs and its availability. If safety algorithm successfully generates a safe sequence of the processes, then system will be in safe state and so deadlock will not occur otherwise the system will be in unsafe state and deadlock can occur. The conventional safety algorithm is totally based on the processes resource need and its availability and finally it generate a safe sequence. In this paper, dynamic programming approach is used to solve the safety algorithm. Apart from processes resource needs and its availability, here, burst time of the processes is also considered to find the optimal safe sequence of processes that leads minimum average waiting time.