theory - What is starvation?

Question

In multitasking systems, some abnormal conditions prevent progress of executing processes or threads. I'll refer to both processes and threads simply as "processes". Two of these conditions are called dead-lock and live-lock.

The former refers to processes which are blocking each other, thus preventing either from executing. The latter refers to processes which prevent each other from progressing, but do not actually block the execution. For instance, they might continually cause each other to rollback transactions, neither ever being able to finish them.

Another condition is known as resource starvation, in which one or more finite resources, required for the progress of the processes, have been depleted by them and can't be restored unless the processes progress. This is also a special case of live-lock.

I'd like to know if there is any other definition, particularly an academic one, for "starvation" that is not limited to "resource starvation". References are specially welcome.

And, no, this is not homework. :-)

Answer 1

Imagine you're in a queue to purchase food at a restaurant, for which pregnant women have priority. And there's just a whole bunch of pregnant women arriving all the time.

You'll soon be starving. ;)

Now imagine you are a low-priority process and the pregnant women are higher priority ones. =)