Defining deadlock

Abstract

Deadlock has been widely studied in many fields of computer science, notably in communications, database, and operating systems. Perhaps because (at least one state called) deadlock is tractable, there exists extensive literature on the subject. Deadlock was apparently decisively defined over thirty years ago, with its characteristics and handlers. Yet, much of the literature remains inconsistent in its treatment of this anomaly.A more precise definition is clearly needed to distinguish between the different states that are termed deadlock. A classification of dead states is required to distinguish the causes and appropriate handlers for each. We introduce a model to structure our research.