Starvation
Starvation is a condition in which a task persistently lacks the resources or execution opportunities needed to make progress while competing work proceeds.
Troubleshooting Java, Second Edition
A concurrency condition in which a thread is unfairly excluded from obtaining execution time or a required resource.
- How it is used
- Diagnoses whether lock contention unfairly excludes threads from execution in multithreaded applications.
- How deep it goes
- Defines unfair exclusion and traces it through sampling, lock counts, monitors, affected threads, and execution time.
- Examples
- Uses producer-consumer threads sharing an ArrayList, balanced lock counts, monitor histories, and aggregated profiler statistics.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose starvation with sampling and lock profiling, then evaluate changes that reduce waiting or rebalance thread execution.
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Learn Concurrent Programming with Go
Starvation is a situation in which an execution is blocked from gaining access to a shared resource because other executions keep it unavailable for a long time or indefinitely.
- How it is used
- Diagnoses unfair shared-resource access and motivates write-preferring readers–writer locks.
- How deep it goes
- Explains the failure sequence and implements lock-state checks, condition waits, counters, and broadcasts.
- Examples
- Uses two looping Go readers, a waiting writer, indefinite output, and a write-preferring lock that prints “Write finished.”
- What you can do after
- Build it from scratch using condition variables and mutexes to prevent write starvation in a readers–writer lock.
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C# Concurrency: Asynchronous and multithreaded programming
Starvation is a concurrency condition in which a thread is prevented from making progress because another thread retains a required resource for an excessive time.
- How it is used
- Diagnoses multithreading failures where locks or processor time prevent otherwise runnable threads from progressing.
- How deep it goes
- Explains lock and CPU mechanisms through infinite-loop programs, then compares Windows and Linux scheduling behavior.
- Examples
- Uses competing console writers, an indefinitely held lock, processor affinity, and AboveNormal thread priority.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose starvation by distinguishing excessive lock duration from CPU monopolization and apply shortest-duration lock guidance.
Read how C# Concurrency: Asynchronous and multithreaded programming explains starvation →
Grokking Concurrency
Starvation is a concurrency failure in which a task is indefinitely denied the resources or execution opportunities needed to make progress.
- How it is used
- Diagnoses starvation as a concurrency failure alongside deadlocks and livelocks.
- How deep it goes
- Explains resource denial, scheduling causes, priority effects, and aging, but does not detail an implementation of fair scheduling.
- Examples
- Uses dining philosophers, chopstick locks, dumpling counts, and unequal philosopher output to demonstrate unfair progress.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose starvation by tracing resource access, scheduling, priorities, synchronization, and task load.
Related concepts
- lockless techniqueproduced by · Lock-free is a concurrency progress property that guarantees some operation completes within a finite number of steps despite contention, without relying on mutual-exclusion locks.
- write-preferring readers-writer lockaddressed by · A write-preferring readers-writer lock is a readers-writer synchronization lock that prioritizes waiting writers to prevent prolonged writer blocking.
- livelockincludes · A livelock is a concurrency failure in which active threads or tasks repeatedly respond to one another without making useful overall progress.
- fair-share schedulingaddressed by · Fair-share scheduling is an operating-system scheduling algorithm that distributes CPU usage among users or groups rather than equally among individual processes.
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