Practical Spin Locks

The mutual exclusion problem was first identified in the early 1960s. Dijkstra attributes the first 2-thread solution to Theodorus Dekker (Dijkstra 1968b). Dijkstra himself published an n-thread solution in 1965 [CACM]. The problem has been intensely studied ever since. Taubenfeld (2008) provides a summary of significant historical highlights. [Ben-Ari 2006, Chaps. 3, 4, 5] presents a bit more detail. Much more extensive coverage can be found in Taubenfeld’s encyclopedic text (Taubenfeld 2006).