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Semaphores

The professor wants code to help synchronize office hours so that (1) only one person speaks at a time, (2) each student question is answered before another is asked, and (3) the professor can nap when no students are present. The student must write procedures for the professor and students to loop through answering/asking questions. For the second problem, the student must write code for a customer and bank manager thread to synchronize access to a safe deposit box, which requires both keys be inserted simultaneously. The threads must delay until both arrive, then the customer can open the box while the manager waits until the customer finishes before taking a break.

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Syed Aftab Rashid
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172 views

Semaphores

The professor wants code to help synchronize office hours so that (1) only one person speaks at a time, (2) each student question is answered before another is asked, and (3) the professor can nap when no students are present. The student must write procedures for the professor and students to loop through answering/asking questions. For the second problem, the student must write code for a customer and bank manager thread to synchronize access to a safe deposit box, which requires both keys be inserted simultaneously. The threads must delay until both arrive, then the customer can open the box while the manager waits until the customer finishes before taking a break.

Uploaded by

Syed Aftab Rashid
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Problem 1: The Office Hours problem (mandatory, 100

points)
You have been hired by the CS Division to write code to help synchronize a
professor and his/her students during office hours. The professor, of course, wants
to take a nap if no students are around to ask questions; if there are students who
want to ask questions, they must synchronize with each other and with the
professor so that (i) only one person is speaking at any one time, (ii) each student
question is answered by the professor, and (iii) no student asks another question
before the professor is done answering the previous one. You are to write four
procedures:  AnswerStart(), AnswerDone(), QuestionStart(), and QuestionDone(). 
The professor loops running the code: AnswerStart(): give answer: AnswerDone().
AnswerStart() doesn't return until a question has been asked. Each student loops
running the code: QuestionStart(): ask question: QuestionDone(). QuestionStart()
does not return until it is the student's turn to ask a question. Since professors
consider it rude for a student not to wait for an answer, QuestionDone() should not
return until the professor has finished answering the question.

 Problem 2: The Safe-deposit Box problem (optional,


20 extra points)
You have been hired by your local bank to solve the safety deposit
box synchronization problem. In order to open a safety deposit box, you need two
keys to be inserted simultaneously: one from the customer and one from the bank
manager. For those of you who saw Terminator 2,  something like this protected
access to the vault containing the Terminator's CPU chip. The customer and the
bank manager are threads. You are to write two
procedures: CustomerArrives() and BankManagerArrives(). The procedures must
delay until both are present: the customer then calls OpenDepositBox(). In
addition, the bank manager must wait around until the customer finishes, to lock up
the bank vault - in other words, the bank manager cannot return
from BankManagerArrives() until after the customer has returned
from OpenDepositBox().  The bank manager can then take a coffee break, while
the customer goes to spend the contents of the safety deposit box.

For problem 2:

(a) Provide a detailed description of how you would solve this problem.


Specifically, you need to describe what threads will be used, and the pseudo-code
for each one. Write your pseudo-code in a README file. 

(b) Implement your pseudo-code as threads in a new copy of threadtest.cc, use


semaphores appropriately and provide meaningful output messages.

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