Question

Consider the following scenario and check whether race condition is possible or not. Justify your answer with a proper demonstration. If a race condition occurs show how you can prevent it. Alice and Bob both are using the joint bank account to purchase the electronics items from an Amazon website. The list of operation performed at time TI in their joint account are shown below. (i) Alice purchase a mobile phone in the Amazon web portal. (ii) Bob credits the amount to the joint account.

Answer 1

A race condition can occur when both Alice and Bob access the joint bank account simultaneously. To prevent this, synchronization mechanisms like locks or semaphores can be used.

Step-by-step explanation:

A race condition occurs when two or more threads access shared data simultaneously, leading to unpredictable results. In the given scenario, a race condition is possible when Alice and Bob both try to access and modify the joint bank account balance at the same time.

To demonstrate this, consider the following sequence of events:

1. Alice reads the current balance, let's say it's $1000.
2. Bob reads the same balance at the same time, also $1000.
3. Alice subtracts $200 from the balance and saves the new value as $800.
4. Bob adds $100 to the balance and saves the new value as $1100.

The race condition arises because both Alice and Bob read the same balance simultaneously, and their changes may overwrite or interfere with each other. To prevent this, we can use synchronization mechanisms like locks or semaphores to ensure that only one thread can access the shared data at a time.