Lamport's bakery algorithm is a computer algorithm devised by computer scientist Leslie Lamport, as part of his long study of the formal correctness of concurrent systems, which is intended to improve the safety in the usage of shared resources among multiple threads by means of mutual exclusion.
In computer science, it is common for multiple threads to simultaneously access the same resources. Data corruption can occur if two or more threads try to write into the same memory location, or if one thread reads a memory location before another has finished writing into it. Lamport's bakery algorithm is one of many mutual exclusion algorithms designed to prevent concurrent threads entering critical sections of code concurrently to eliminate the risk of data corruption.
Algorithm
Analogy
Lamport envisioned a bakery with a numbering machine at its entrance so each customer is given a unique number. Numbers increase by one as customers enter the store. A global counter displays the number of the customer that is currently being served. All other customers must wait in a queue until the baker finishes serving the current customer and the next number is displayed. When the customer is done shopping and has disposed of his or her number, the clerk increments the number, allowing the next customer to be served. That customer must draw another number from the numbering machine in order to shop again.
According to the analogy, the "customers" are threads, identified by the letter i, obtained from a global variable.
Due to the limitations of computer architecture, some parts of Lamport's analogy need slight modification. It is possible that more than one thread will get the same number n when they request it; this cannot be avoided (without first solving the mutual exclusion problem, which is the goal of the algorithm). Therefore, it is assumed that the thread identifier i is also a priority. A lower value of i means a higher priority and threads with higher priority will enter the critical section first.
Critical section
The critical section is that part of code that requires exclusive access to resources and may only be executed by one thread at a time. In the bakery analogy, it is when the customer trades with the baker that others must wait.
When a thread wants to enter the critical section, it has to check whether now is its turn to do so. It should check the number n of every other thread to make sure that it has the smallest one. In case another thread has the same number, the thread with the smallest i will enter the critical section first.
In pseudocode this comparison between threads a and b can be written in the form: // Let na - the customer number for thread a, and // ia - the thread number for thread a, then
(na, ia) < (nb, ib) which is equivalent to: (na < nb) or ((na == nb) and (ia < ib))
Once the thread ends its critical job, it gets rid of its number and enters the non-critical section.
Non-critical section
The non-critical section is the part of code that doesn't need exclusive access. It represents some thread-specific computation that doesn't interfere with other threads' resources and execution.
This part is analogous to actions that occur after shopping, such as putting change back into the wallet.
Implementation of the algorithm
Definitions
In Lamport's original paper, the entering variable is known as choosing, and the following conditions apply: Words choosing [i] and number [i] are in the memory of process i, and are initially zero. The range of values of number [i] is unbounded. A process may fail at any time. We assume that when it fails, it immediately goes to its noncritical section and halts. There may then be a period when reading from its memory gives arbitrary values. Eventually, any read from its memory must give a value of zero.
Code examples
Pseudocode
In this example, all threads execute the same "main" function, Thread. In real applications, different threads often have different "main" functions.
Note that as in the original paper, the thread checks itself before entering the critical section. Since the loop conditions will evaluate as false, this does not cause much delay.
// declaration and initial values of global variables
Entering: array [1..NUM_THREADS] of bool = { false}; Number: array [1..NUM_THREADS] of integer = { 0};