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Philosophers

A high-performance, thread-safe solution to the classic dining philosophers synchronization problem, implemented in C using POSIX threads and mutexes.

What is the Dining Philosophers Problem?

The dining philosophers problem is a classic synchronization challenge in concurrent programming. It illustrates the difficulties of resource allocation and deadlock avoidance in multi-threaded systems.

Problem Description

Learn about the classic problem and its challenges

Our Solution

Explore our thread-based implementation

Get Started

Installation

Build and compile the project

Usage Guide

Run your first simulation

Command Line Arguments

Configure simulation parameters

Function Reference

Browse the complete API

Key Features

Thread-Safe

Uses POSIX threads and mutexes for safe concurrent execution

Deadlock Prevention

Implements strategies to prevent deadlock and race conditions

Configurable

Fully customizable timing and philosopher count parameters

Real-Time Monitoring

Dedicated monitor thread tracks philosopher states

Color-Coded Output

Visual console output for easy state tracking

Performance Optimized

Efficient mutex-based synchronization with minimal overhead

Core Concepts

Threading Model

Understand the thread architecture

Synchronization

Learn about mutex-based fork management

Deadlock Prevention

Explore our deadlock avoidance strategy

Data Structures

Review the core data structures

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love