Tech moves fast! Stay ahead of the curve with Techopedia!
Join nearly 200,000 subscribers who receive actionable tech insights from Techopedia.
Livelock
Definition - What does Livelock mean?
Livelock is a condition that takes place when two or more programs change their state continuously, with neither program making progress. Processes enter a state of livelock when they clash with each other’s state and fail to progress because both of them are changing the state, hence having the same state at a given time.
Techopedia explains Livelock
Livelock can be best explained with the help of an analogy of two people passing through a passageway and each tries to step around the other, but they end up swaying from side to side, getting in each other's way as they try to get out of the way. Livelock is different from deadlock in a way that both the processes involved in livelock are repeatedly changing their states with regard to each other and not progressing. Algorithms are produced to get out of the state of livelock by randomly picking a process and stopping its state change.
