self doubt

Question

why spinlock requires context switch ?

Comments

Spin lock is a case of priority inversion where in higher priority process wait for a process in a critical section but then the process present in critical section will not be executing because the CPU is with the higher priotrity process waiting outside there is compulsory need of Context switch by OS so that higher process may enter into critical section.

Answer 1

Ur  question. is somewhat confusing.

In fact, Spinlocks have an advantage that there is no context switching as the thread would be put in loop checking the spinlock's state thus wont be context switched out. Thus, spinning is effective in case locks are held for short duration.

In traditional mutex, the thread would have been put to sleep when the lock was held by another thread and thus, context switched out.