Semaphore

Semaphore is a synchronization object proposed by Edsger Dijkstra. A semaphore is characterized by a natural number k. A task may atomically increase or decrease k. When k reaches 0 the tasks attempting to decrease it are blocked. These are released in an unspecified order when other tasks increase k, one per increment.

The natural number k works like a count of available slots for resources. When you (as task) want to use something (an object, a file, any resource) that can only be used by a limited number of tasks (usually one, but possibly more), you see if there are available slots (check the value of k). If there are slots available (k > 0), you check one out (decrement k). When you're done with the resource, you check your slot back in (increment k). If there were no slots available when you checked (k = 0), you wait until one becomes available.

A semaphore is considered a low-level synchronization primitive. They are exposed to deadlocking.

See also mutex, a variant of semaphore.