Gadara nets: Modeling and analyzing lock allocation for deadlock avoidance in multithreaded software

Deadlock avoidance in shared-memory multithreaded programs is receiving increased attention as multicore architectures and parallel programming are becoming more prevalent. In our on-going project, called Gadara, the objective is to control the execution of multithreaded programs in order to avoid deadlocks by using techniques from discrete-event control theory. In this project, Petri nets are employed to model parallel programs. This paper formally defines the class of Petri nets that emerges from modeling multithreaded programs, called Gadara nets. Gadara nets are related to, but different from, other classes of nets that have been characterized in deadlock analysis of manufacturing systems. The contributions of this paper include: (i) formal definition of Gadara nets and of controlled Gadara nets; (ii) a behavioral analysis of Gadara nets for liveness and reversibility using siphons; and (iii) identification of a convexity-type property for the set of live markings.

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