Editing Mutual exclusion (section)

==Types of mutual exclusion devices==
The solutions explained above can be used to build the synchronization primitives below:
* [[Lock (computer science)|Locks]] (mutexes)
* [[Readers–writer lock]]s
* [[Reentrant mutex|Recursive lock]]s
* [[Semaphore (programming)|Semaphores]]
* [[Monitor (synchronization)|Monitors]]
* [[Message passing]]
* [[Tuple space]]

Many forms of mutual exclusion have side-effects. For example, classic [[semaphore (programming)|semaphores]] permit [[deadlock (computer science)|deadlock]]s, in which one process gets a semaphore, another process gets a second semaphore, and then both wait till the other semaphore to be released. Other common side-effects include [[Resource starvation|starvation]], in which a process never gets sufficient resources to run to completion; [[priority inversion]], in which a higher-priority thread waits for a lower-priority thread; and high latency, in which response to interrupts is not prompt.

Much research is aimed at eliminating the above effects, often with the goal of guaranteeing [[Non-blocking synchronization|non-blocking progress]]. No perfect scheme is known. Blocking system calls used to sleep an entire process. Until such calls became [[Thread safety|threadsafe]], there was no proper mechanism for sleeping a single thread within a process (see [[polling (computer science)|polling]]).{{citation needed|date=May 2016}}