The problem of determining whether it is possible for a set of "free-running" processes to become deadlocked is considered. It is assumed that any request by a process is immediately granted as long as there are enough free resource umts to satisfy the request The questton of whether or not there exists a polynomml algorithm for predicting deadlock in a "claim-limited" serially reusable resource system has been open. An algorithm employing a network flow technique is presented for this purpose. Its running time is bounded by O(mn 15) if the system consists of n processes sharing m types of serially reusable resources.
K~Y WORDS AND PHRASES:deadlock, serially reusable resource, resour~ allocation, process, deadlock algorithm, operating system, efficient algorithm, network flow, bipartite matching, degree-constrained matchmg, algorithm complexity CR CATEGORIES. 4.32, 4 35, 5.25, 5.32