The Design and Construction of Deadlock-Free Concurrent Systems

It is a difficult task to produce software that is guaranteed never to fail, but it is a vital goal for which to strive in many real-life situations. The problem is especially complex in the field of parallel programming, where there are extra things that can go wrong. A particularly serious problem is deadlock. Here, we consider how to construct systems that are guaranteed deadlock-free by design.

Design rules, old and new, that eliminate deadlock are catalogued and their theoretical foundation illuminated. Then the development of a software engineering tool is described, which proves deadlock freedom by verifying adherence to these methods. The use of this tool is illustrated with several case studies.

The thesis concludes with a discussion of related issues of parallel program reliability.