livelock

English

Etymology

(ca. 1971) live +‎ lock; punning antonym for deadlock.

Pronunciation

• Audio (UK):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: live‧lock

Noun

livelock (countable and uncountable, plural livelocks)

1. (computing) A state resembling deadlock in which various computational processes are constantly changing but never reach a point where any of them can proceed.
   • 2000, Douglas Lea, Concurrent Programming in Java, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN, page 193:

     However, this can lead to livelock—the optimistic analog of indefinite blocking in which methods continuously spin without making any further progress.

   • 2003, Mark Pearce, Comprehensive VB .NET Debugging, →ISBN, page 439:

     A process is considered to be in a state of livelock when thread code is still executing, but two or more threads are in a never-ending cycle with each other and no useful work is being done.

Verb

livelock (third-person singular simple present livelocks, present participle livelocking, simple past and past participle livelocked)

1. (computing) To enter a state of livelock.

References

• “livelock”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.