MC2DR: Multi-cycle Deadlock Detection and Recovery Algorithm for Distributed Systems

Even though there have been many research works on distributed deadlock detection and recovery mechanisms, the multi-cycle deadlock problems are not extensively studied yet. This paper proposes a multi-cycle deadlock detection and recovery mechanism, named as MC2DR. Most existing algorithms use edge-chasing technique for deadlock detection where a special message called probe is propagated from an initiator process and echoes are sent back to it that carries on necessary information for deadlock detection. These algorithms either can’t detect deadlocks in which the initiator is indirectly involved or a single process is involved in multiple deadlock cycles. Some of them often detect phantom deadlocks also. MC2DR defines new structures for probe and victim messages, allows any node to detect deadlock dynamically, which overcomes the aforementioned problems and increases the deadlock resolution efficiency. The simulation results show that our algorithm outperforms the existing probe based algorithms.