How to solve Dining Philosopher's Problem?

A Classic Synchronization Problem in Computer Science

The Dining Philosophers Problem is a classic computer science problem that explores synchronization and resource allocation in a concurrent system.

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Introduction

The Setup- Five philosophers sit at a circular table with a bowl of spaghetti and five chopsticks.

To design an algorithm that allows philosophers to eat & think alternately without any of them starving, given that a philosopher needs both chopsticks on his left & right to eat.

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Problem Statement

The problem was structured to address the problem of deadlocks that can arise when multiple resources are shared in an operating system.

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Why the problem was structured?

Let’s consider the philosophers as P0, P1, P2, P3, P4, & chopsticks as C0, C1, C2, C3, C4.   Algorithm   1. P0 enters the process and acquires resources C0 and C1 as no other process is in the system.

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Approach

2. Now, process P1 enters the system. It waits for C1 to be freed by P0, then acquires C1 and C2.

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Time Complexity: O(N), where N is the number of processes or philosophers.

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