Link Details

Starvation occurs when one or more threads of execution are prevented from proceeding beyond a given point due to a predicate that will never be satisfied. Deadlock is a special form of starvation where threads of execution are prevented from making progress due to predicate conditions that are directly dependent on them. To illustrate, consider threads A and B, with shared resources 1 and 2. If thread A holds resource 1, and thread B holds resource 2; a deadlock will occur if thread A needs resource 2 to proceed and thread B is waiting on thread A to release resource 1. Since neither thread releases the resource it is holding, and both need each other’s resource to continue, they both become engaged in a deadly embrace and cannot proceed any further.