Hierarchical run time deadlock detection in process networks

Deadlock detection is a well-studied problem that may be considered solved from a theoretical point of view. However, specific cases may demand for specific solutions. One such specific case is deadlock detection in Kahn Process Networks. The Kahn process network (KPN) is an expressive model of computation that is widely used to model and specify deterministic streaming applications. The processes in the network communicate point-to-point over FIFO channels whose sizes are undecidable in general. As a consequence, deadlock may occur and, therefore, a run-time deadlock detection mechanism is required. This can be organized in a centralized way, a distributed way, and a hierarchical way. Centralized and distributed procedures have been reported in the literature. In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical approach for KPN deadlock detection at run time. We also give results for the implementation on the IBM Cell processor.