Deadlock in Operating System (OS)

Deadlock refers to the condition when 2 or more processes are waiting for each other to release a resource indefinitely. A process in nature requests a resource first and uses it and finally releases it.

But in deadlock situation, both the processes wait for the other process. Let’s look at one example to understand it – Say, Process A has resource R1 , Process B has resource R2. If Process A request resource R2 and Process B requests resource R1, at the same time , then deadlock occurs.

Important Features of Deadlock –

• In deadlock, processes get blocked because each process is holding some resource and they are waiting for other resource , which is held by another process.
• Deadlock usually occurs in multiprocessing, time- sharing etc
• In Multiprocessing, many processes share a specific type of mutually exclusion resource known as soft lock.
• Time Sharing computers are equipped with a hardwired lock which gaurantees exclusive access  to processes , thus preventing deadlock.
• There is no general solution to avoid soft deadlock.