What is Mutex?

Mutex is an operating system concept that stands for “mutual exclusion”. Mutex is considered a low-level mechanism that intends to assure that one thread or specific process can access a shared resource at a particular time. Critical code parts are frequently protected from concurrent access using this low-level approach, which offers mutual exclusion. 

Mutexes are widely used to synchronize access to shared resources, including files, database connections, and hardware devices, in multi-threaded and multi-process systems. Moreover, they are used to safeguard crucial portions of code that must be performed by a single thread at a time. Mutexes are implemented as operating system primitives and accessible through system calls in various programming languages and operating systems.

Applications of Mutex 

1. Resource protection: Mutexes are frequently used to prevent concurrent access by multiple threads or processes to shared resources like files, sockets, and hardware devices. A thread ensures that only one thread can access a shared resource at a time by collecting a Mutex before accessing it, avoiding race situations and other concurrency-related problems. 
2. Deadlock Prevention: Mutexes are also being used to prevent deadlocks in Multithreaded applications. By considering mutexes in a proper and specific order, a thread can be saved from getting into a deadlock situation.
3. Thread Safety: Mutexes are frequently used in libraries and other software components that are intended to be used by several threads at once to maintain thread safety. A thread can make sure that its operations do not collide with those of other threads and that the component stays thread-safe by acquiring a Mutex before accessing shared data structures or resources. 

Pre-requisites: Monitors in Process Synchronization

In the field of Computer Science and OS, Mutex, and Monitor are most of the important fundamental mechanisms which are synchronization used for managing the concurrent access of different shared resources by a number of threads and processes. The main goal of Mutex and Monitor are the same, but there are some key differences that make these terms unique. In this article, we will go through detailed information on Mutex and Monitor. Also, we will dive into the difference between these 2 fundamental mechanisms with respect to Functionality, Usage, Performance, and implementation.