Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Dave Singleton

Andrew G Tucker

Nicolai Kosche

Bart Smaalders

In a multiprocessing computer system, a schedulable process entity (such as a UNIX process, a Solaris lightweight process, or a Windows NT thread) sets a memory flag (sc.sub.-- nopreempt) before acquiring a shared resource. This flag tells the operating system that the process entity should not be preempted. When it is time for the process entity to be preempted, but sc.sub.-- nopreempt is set, the operating system sets a flag (sc.sub.-- yield) to tell the process entity that the entity should surrender the CPU when the entity releases the shared resource. However, the entity is not preempted but continues to run. When the entity releases the shared resource, the entity checks the sc.sub.-- yield flag. If the flag is set, the entity makes an OS call to surrender the CPU.

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Dave Singleton