Newsgroups: comp.parallel
From: gah@u.washington.edu (G. Herrmannsfeldt)
Subject: Re: Inter-process Synchronization Primitives
Organization: University of Washington
Date: 22 Apr 1997 12:04:42 GMT
Message-ID: <5ji9gq$h6g@server1.ctc.com>

Inter-process synchronization should be an OS function.  Since the OS
has to dispatch all processes, it isn't too hard for it to allow some
process syncronization.  The API is usually OS dependent, though. 

For shared memory multiprocessor (SMP) machines, there must be some way
for one CPU to alter a memory flag without risk that another CPU will
do so at the same time.  This is a hardware function, which must exist in
a useful shared memory system.  

-- glen

--
Articles to parallel@ctc.com (Administrative: bigrigg@ctc.com)
Archive: http://www.hensa.ac.uk/parallel/internet/usenet/comp.parallel