Answer to Question #320882 in Computer Networks for Jona

Question

What is deadlock? What is starvation? How do they differ from each other?

Answer 1

Deadlock is a situation where a set of processes are blocked because each process is holding a resource and waiting for another resource acquired by some other process. 

Starvation is the problem that occurs when high priority processes keep executing and low priority processes get blocked for indefinite time.

Deadlock happens when every process holds a resource and waits for another process to hold another resource. In contrast, starvation happens when a low priority program requests a system resource but cannot run because a higher priority program has been employing that resource for a long time.