PROCESS SYNCHRONIZATION

As a part of Initiative taken by Indian Institute of Technology, Madras to work with Engineering Colleges of India to enhance the skills and knowledge level of the engineering students, Quality Enhancement in Engineering Education’s (QEEE) “Direct to Student (D2S)” program was conducted at Dronacharya Group of Institutions, Greater Noida. The training program was conducted on “Process Synchronization” on 8th, 9th & 16th March, 2016. QEEE is conducted in real time through ICT and synchronous technology is used to allow for an integration of superior external scholastic inputs into current pedagogical practices. QEEE project is funded by MHRD, Government of India.

The QEEE session was conducted by Dr. Krishna Sivalingam, IIT Madras. Dr. Aditi Paul, Assistant Professor (IT) from Dronacharya Group of Institutions, Greater Noida coordinated the session. Students from CSE & IT IV Sem attended the workshop.

The session was aimed at enhancing the knowledge of students in the branch of Operating System. The objective of this workshop was to improve the technical skills of students so that quality of education can be raised to a higher level.

First Day : 8th March, 2016

Dr. Krishna Sivalingam, started the first day session on 8th March, 2016 on the topic “Critical Section Problem”. The intent of the session was to introduce the students with basic concepts of Process Synchronization and Shared Data. The idea about concurrent execution, Race Condition, producer consumer problem etc. was discussed in the session. The real life example of critical section problem was also elaborated along with the software code. The conditions of critical section problem i.e. mutual exclusion, progress and bounded waiting were demonstrated in the example. Dr. Krishna continued his lecture by executing software code on critical section problem. He focused on the critical section and remainder section of the program code and showed how they are accessed by two processes. He also discussed about the variables and their significance in critical section problem.

Second Day : 9th March, 2016

The second session started on 9th March, 2016 with the topic “Solution of critical section problem”. In this section Prof. Krishna explained the “Bounded waiting with Test and Set” which is hardware based solution. He explained how a process acquire and release lock variable by multiple process in critical section. He further introduced the “Mutex Lock” and discussed its applicability in synchronization. Then he introduced the concept of semaphore and the special functions wait () and signal () used in this tool. Prof. Krishna continued his session with “Bounded Buffer Problem” and its solution using semaphore. In the next part he explained the “Readers Writers problem” and explained how it can be solved using semaphore’s wait () and signal () functions.

Third Day : 16th March 2016

The third session started on 16th March 2016 with the topic “Readers Writers Problem- an example of classical problem of synchronization”. Prof. Krishna explained the concept of semaphore to solve the Readers Writers Problem. He further discussed the producers / consumers problem and dining philosopher problem. In dining philosopher problem Prof. Krishna explained the occurrence deadlock due to circular wait and discussed different solution for it. He also implemented the solution in java code with an example of banking system.

Finally he concluded the session with the queries and doubt clearing session.

The sessions were very effective for the students. Dr. Krishna executed the programming code on the desktop and explained the result which totally grasped the attention of all the participants. The study material and the practice questions provided in the course packs were highly useful.