Can Unyielding Goroutines Starve Others on a Single Thread?

Cooperatively Scheduled Goroutines: Exploring the Potential for Blocking Execution

The core concept behind goroutines is their cooperative scheduling, as highlighted in the provided blog post from Nindalf. This cooperative nature implies that goroutines essentially self-regulate their execution, without relying on preemptive interruptions from the underlying kernel.

Given this scheduling model, a crucial question arises: can goroutines that indefinitely loop without yielding execution effectively starve other goroutines on the same thread?

To address this question, let's consider the code snippet provided in the post. The sum function simply computes and prints the sum of integers up to a specified limit.

When executing this code with multiple goroutines, it's clear that if there's only one thread available, the goroutines will not run concurrently. Instead, they will execute sequentially, one after the other.

The reason for this behavior lies in the cooperative scheduling mechanism of goroutines. Without explicit yielding points, the goroutine that is currently executing will continue to do so until it encounters a situation where it must surrender control.

In the example code, the absence of any blocking operations, such as channel communication, network input, or system calls, means that the goroutine will execute the loop indefinitely. As a result, it will monopolize the thread, preventing other goroutines from running.

To mitigate this issue, it's essential to incorporate yielding points into goroutine execution. This can be achieved through various mechanisms, including:

• Calling functions that block, like fmt.Println() or accessing system resources
• Using channels for communication and synchronization
• Explicitly yielding using the runtime.Gosched() function

By embracing these techniques, developers can ensure that goroutines do not block indefinitely, allowing for more balanced and efficient execution in multi-threaded environments.

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