Livelock
A livelock is a concurrency failure in which active threads or tasks repeatedly respond to one another without making useful overall progress.
Modern C, Third Edition
A livelock is a concurrency failure in which threads continue executing but repeatedly make no effective progress in response to one another.
- How it is used
- Explains livelock as a threaded-program failure in which apparent activity masks the absence of progress.
- How deep it goes
- Defines repeating control-loop behavior, contrasts it with deadlock, and points toward case analysis without developing a full prevention method.
- Examples
- Uses cyclic traffic detours and interacting vehicles to model threads that repeatedly change behavior without escaping.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate threaded behavior by distinguishing blocked waits from active repetition and by analyzing possible state cycles.
Grokking Concurrency
A livelock is a concurrency failure in which tasks remain active but repeatedly relinquish and reacquire resources without making progress.
- How it is used
- Explains a concurrency failure that helps distinguish active nonprogress from blocked execution.
- How deep it goes
- Explains the lock cycle through analogy, philosophers, effects, and Python code, but does not provide a detailed detection algorithm.
- Examples
- Uses a simultaneous-phone-call analogy, dining philosophers, chopsticks, and a Python threading listing.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose repeated lock concessions and reduce livelock by applying hierarchical lock ordering.
C++ Concurrency in Action, Second Edition
A livelock is a state in which threads repeatedly change or retry operations in response to one another without making useful progress.
- How it is used
- Explains livelock as a risk of lock-free data structures and a cause of unwanted blocking symptoms.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the retry cycle, contrasts active checking with blocking, and describes symptoms without detailing detection procedures.
- Examples
- Uses two threads repeatedly invalidating each other’s operations and an analogy of people retrying passage through a narrow gap.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose possible livelock from stalled progress combined with active thread execution and high CPU usage.
Read how C++ Concurrency in Action, Second Edition explains livelock →
Related concepts
- wait-free synchronizationcontrasts with · A concurrency technique in which every operation completes in a bounded number of steps, regardless of the actions or delays of other threads.
- concurrency bugkind of · A concurrency bug is a software defect caused by the timing, ordering, synchronization, or interaction of concurrent operations.
- starvationkind of · Starvation is a condition in which a task persistently lacks the resources or execution opportunities needed to make progress while competing work proceeds.
- deadlockcontrasts with · A deadlock is a state in concurrent execution where two or more activities are indefinitely blocked by dependencies on resources, events, or progress that cannot become available.
- timeoutproduced by · A timeout is a configured time limit after which an incomplete operation or wait is stopped, abandoned, or treated as unsuccessful.
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