One-sided Synchronization A new Approach to Synchronization Primitives

Todays operating systems are designed to manage multiple processes within a uniprocessor system, within several processors and even within distributed computer systems. Fundamental to this design is concurrency, especially synchronization of the activities of multiple processes. Most books on operating systems contain large chapters for this important topic. All discussed techniques therein are designed to bother all involved processes. The first part of this paper shows an overview of the most common techniques for synchronization. A new approach with a completely different design technique will be discussed afterwards. It is not always necessary to involve all processes needing sychronization. A couple of implementations for different operating systems and user/kernel mode applications will be compared to existing techniques.