Simulation analysis of multithreaded programs under deadlock-avoidance control

We employ discrete event simulation to evaluate the performance of deadlock-prone multithreaded programs, either general-purpose software or parallel simulators, under a novel technique for deadlock-avoidance control recently proposed in the literature. The programs are modeled by a special class of Petri nets, called Gadara nets. We propose a formal simulation methodology for Gadara nets. We then use simulation to analyze two deadlock-prone multithreaded programs, where we study system performance in terms of safety, efficiency, and activity level, both before and after deadlock-avoidance control is applied. We further conduct a sensitivity analysis to investigate the effect of key parameters on the program´s performance. We discuss the implications of the above results on the practical implementation of control strategies that prevent deadlocks in multithreaded programs.