1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

(/cs/) (https://www.baeldung.com/cs/)

Deadlock, Livelock and

Starvation
/freestar.com/?
Last modified: April 28, 2021
o&utm_source=baeldung.com&utm_content=baeldung_adhesion)

by baeldung (https://www.baeldung.com/cs/author/baeldung)

Core Concepts (https://www.baeldung.com/cs/category/core-

concepts)

If you have a few years of experience in Computer Science or

research, and you’re interested in sharing that experience with the
community, have a look at our Contribution Guidelines
(/contribution-guidelines).

1. Introduction
https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 1/10
1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

In a multiprogramming environment, more than one process may

compete for a finite set of resources. If a process requests for a resource
and the resource is not presently available, then the process waits for it.
Sometimes this waiting process never succeeds to get access to the
resource. This waiting for resources leads to three scenarios – deadlock,
livelock (/java-deadlock-livelock), and starvation.
In this tutorial, we’ll discuss these three conditions.

2. Deadlock
In this section, we’ll first discuss deadlock, its necessary conditions, and
how to prevent it.

2.1. What Is a Deadlock?

A deadlock is a situation in which processes block each other due to
resource acquisition and none of the processes makes any progress as
they wait for the resource held by the other process.
/freestar.com/?
o&utm_source=baeldung.com&utm_content=baeldung_adhesion)

The above figure shows the deadlock scenario between process 1 and
process 2. Both processes are holding one resource and waiting for the
other resource held by the other process. This is a deadlock situation as

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 2/10

1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

neither process 1 or process 2 can make progress until one of the

processes gives up its resource.

The new GWI is here.

Don’t spend hours sifting through
spreadsheets and formatting presentatio
Get data you can find (and present) in an

SPONSORED BY GWI

See More

(https://freestar.com/?

2.2. Necessary Conditions for Deadlock

To successfully characterize a scenario as deadlock, the following four
conditions must hold simultaneously:
Mutual Exclusion: At least one resource needs to be held by a process
in a non-sharable mode. Any other process requesting that resource
needs to wait.
/freestar.com/?
Hold and Wait: A process must hold one resource and requests
o&utm_source=baeldung.com&utm_content=baeldung_adhesion)
additional resources that are currently held by other processes.
No Preemption: A resource can’t be forcefully released from a process.
A process can only release a resource voluntarily once it deems to
release.
Circular Wait: A set of a process exists in a manner that
is waiting for a resource held by , waiting for a resource held
by .

2.3. How to Prevent Deadlock

To prevent the occurrence of deadlock, at least one of the necessary
conditions discussed in the previous section should not hold true. Let
us examine the possibility of any of these conditions being false:

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 3/10

1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

Mutual Exclusion: In some cases, this condition can be false. For

example, in a read-only file system, one or more processes can be
granted sharable access. However, this condition can’t always be false.
The reason being some resources are intrinsically non-sharable. For
instance, a mutex (/cs/what-is-mutex)lock is a non-sharable resource.
Hold and Wait: To ensure that the hold-and-wait condition never
occurs, we need to guarantee that once a process requests for a
resource it is not holding any other resource at that time. In general, a
process should request all resources before it begins its execution.

Simplilearn Job Guarantee

Programs. Upskill and Get a
Guarantee your job in today's hottest fiel
Replay with Simplilearn Job Guarantee Programs
Earn top credentials & get hired by our 5
Learn More
SPONSORED BY SIMPLILEARN

See More

(https://freestar.com/?
No Preemption: To make this condition false, a process needs to make
sure that it automatically releases all currently held resources if the
/freestar.com/?
newly requested resource is not available.
o&utm_source=baeldung.com&utm_content=baeldung_adhesion)
Circular Wait: This condition can be made false by imposing a total
ordering of all resource types and ensure that each process requests
resources in increasing order of enumeration. Thus, if there is a set of
resources , a process requires resource and to complete
a task, it needs to request first and then .

3. Livelock
In this section, we’ll discuss live lock which is similar to deadlock with a
subtle difference.

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 4/10

1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

3.1. What Is Livelock?

In the case of a livelock, the states of the processes involved in a live
lock scenario constantly change. On the other hand, the processes still
depend on each other and can never finish their tasks.

/freestar.com/?
o&utm_source=baeldung.com&utm_content=baeldung_adhesion)
The above figure shows an example of livelock. Both “process 1” and
“process 2” need a common resource. Each process checks whether the
other process is in an active state. If so, then it hands over the resource
to the other process. However as both, the process is inactive status,
both kept on handing over the resource to each other indefinitely.

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 5/10

1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

Prestige Beverly Hills Hyde

Prestige Group

(https://freestarcom/?
A real-world example of livelock occurs when two people make a
telephone call to each other and both find the line is busy. Both
gentlemen decide to hang up and attempt to call after the same time
interval. Thus, in the next retry too, they ended up in the same situation.
This is an example of a live lock as this can go on forever.

3.2. Difference Between Deadlock and Livelock?

Although similar in nature, deadlock, and live locks are not the same. In
a deadlock, processes involved in a deadlock are stuck indefinitely and
/freestar.com/?
do not make any state change. However, in a live lock scenario,
o&utm_source=baeldung.com&utm_content=baeldung_adhesion)
processes block each other and wait indefinitely but they change their
resource state continuously. The notable point is that the resource state
change has no effect and does not help the processes make any
progress in their task.

4. Starvation
In this section, we’ll discuss starvation which generally occurs as a result
of a deadlock, livelock, or caused by a greedy process.

4.1. What Is Starvation?

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 6/10

1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

Starvation is an outcome of a process that is unable to gain regular

access to the shared resources it requires to complete a task and thus,
unable to make any progress.

The above figure shows an example of starvation of “process 2” and

“process 3” for the CPU as “process 1” is occupying it for a long duration.

4.2. What Causes Starvation?

Starvation can occur due to deadlock, livelock, or caused by another
process.
As we have seen in the event of a deadlock or a live lock a process
competes with another process to acquire the desired resource to
/freestar.com/?
complete its task. However, due to the deadlock or livelock scenario, it
o&utm_source=baeldung.com&utm_content=baeldung_adhesion)
failed to acquire the resource and generally starved for the resource.
Further, it may occur that a process repeatedly gains access to a shared
resource or use it for a longer duration while other processes wait for
the same resource. Thus, the waiting processes are starved for the
resource by the greedy process.

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 7/10

1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

Turn your Invoices into Cash

Never wait for Buyer Payments. Discount your export bills with

(htt //f t /?

4.3. Avoiding Starvation

One of the possible solutions to prevent starvation is to use a resource
scheduling algorithm with a priority queue that also uses the aging
technique. Aging is a technique that periodically increases the priority of
a waiting process. With this approach, any process waiting for a resource
for a longer duration eventually gains a higher priority. And as the
resource sharing is driven through the priority of the process, no process
starves for a resource indefinitely.
/freestar.com/?
Another solution to prevent starvation is to follow the round-robin
o&utm_source=baeldung.com&utm_content=baeldung_adhesion)
pattern while allocating the resources to a process. In this pattern, the
resource is fairly allocated to each process providing a chance to use
the resource before it is allocated to another process again.

5. Conclusion
In this article, we discussed concepts of deadlock, livelock, and
starvation which occur in a multi-processing operating system.
A deadlock is a situation that occurs when processes block each other
with resource acquisition and makes no further progress. Livelock is a
deadlock-like situation in which processes block each other with a

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 8/10

1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

repeated state change yet make no progress. Starvation is the outcome

of a deadlock, livelock, or as a result of continuous resource denial to a
process.

If you have a few years of experience in Computer Science or

research, and you’re interested in sharing that experience with the
community, have a look at our Contribution Guidelines
(/contribution-guidelines).

Comments are closed on this article!

The exciting new Tiguan is

outstanding outside and…
It's Intelligent technology gives it exceptio
Replay abilities. Some of the exciting features of
new Tiguan are 2.0L TSI Engine, 7-Speed
Learn More
SPONSORED BY VOLKSWAGEN INDIA

See More

(https://freestar.com/?

CATEGORIES
ALGORITHMS (/CS/CATEGORY/ALGORITHMS)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (/CS/CATEGORY/AI)
CORE CONCEPTS (/CS/CATEGORY/CORE-CONCEPTS)
DATA STRUCTURES (/CS/CATEGORY/DATA-STRUCTURES)
GRAPH THEORY (/CS/CATEGORY/GRAPH-THEORY)
LATEX (/CS/CATEGORY/LATEX)
NETWORKING (/CS/CATEGORY/NETWORKING)
SECURITY (/CS/CATEGORY/SECURITY)

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 9/10

1/27/22, 10:45 AM Deadlock, Livelock and Starvation | Baeldung on Computer Science

SERIES
DRAWING CHARTS IN LATEX (/CS/CATEGORY/SERIES)

ABOUT
ABOUT BAELDUNG (HTTPS://WWW.BAELDUNG.COM/ABOUT)
THE FULL ARCHIVE (/CS/FULL_ARCHIVE)
WRITE FOR BAELDUNG (/CONTRIBUTION-GUIDELINES)
EDITORS (HTTPS://WWW.BAELDUNG.COM/EDITORS)

TERMS OF SERVICE (HTTPS://WWW.BAELDUNG.COM/TERMS-OF-SERVICE)

PRIVACY POLICY (HTTPS://WWW.BAELDUNG.COM/PRIVACY-POLICY)
COMPANY INFO (HTTPS://WWW.BAELDUNG.COM/BAELDUNG-COMPANY-INFO)
CONTACT (/CONTACT)

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/deadlock-livelock-starvation#:~:text=Livelock is a deadlock-like,resource denial to a process. 10/10