The Bakery Algorithm: A Simple Solution to Mutual Exclusion

Leslie Lamport developed the Bakery Algorithm to solve the mutual exclusion problem in distributed systems, where multiple processes need to access a shared resource without interference. The algorithm is inspired by the process of getting a ticket at a bakery and assigns each process a number based on a logical queue. By comparing their ticket numbers, processes can determine their order of access to the resource. The Bakery Algorithm is designed to work without relying on mutual exclusion for reading and writing shared variables, making it a simpler and more efficient solution. It was published in 1974 and remains a fundamental algorithm in the field of concurrent computing.