Project : The Sleeping Teaching Assistant

A university computer science department has a teaching assistant (TA) who helps undergraduate students with their programming assignments during regular office hours. The TA's office is rather small and has room for only one desk with a chair and computer. There are two chairs in the hallway outside the office where students can sit and wait if the TA is currently helping another student. When there are no students who need help during office hours, the TA sits at the desk and takes a nap. If a student arrives during office hours and finds the TA sleeping, the student must awaken the TA to ask for help. If a student arrives and finds the TA currently helping another student, the student sits on one of the chairs in the hallway and waits. If no chairs are available, the student will come back at a later time. For the simplicity we assume there are total 4 students, and each student asks for helps at most two times.

Using any synchronization tool and a choice of your own language, implement a solution that coordinates the activities of the TA and the students. Details for this assignment are provided below.

The Students and the TA

Using threads, begin by creating n students. Each will run as a separate thread. The TA will run as a separate thread as well. Student threads will alternate between programming for a period of time and seeking help from the TA. If the TA is available, they will obtain help. Otherwise, they will either sit in a chair in the hallway or, if no chairs are available, will resume programming and will seek help at a later time. If a student arrives and notices that the TA is sleeping, the student must notify the TA using a semaphore. When the TA finishes helping a student, the TA must check to see if there are students waiting for help in the hallway. If so, the TA must help each of these students in turn. If no students are present, the TA may return to napping. To simulate students programming in students threads, and the TA providing help to a student in the TA thread, the appropriate threads should sleep (by invoking sleep()) for a random of time (up to three seconds).

For simplicity, each student thread terminates after getting help twice from the TA. After all students threads terminate, the program cancels the TA thread and then entire program terminates.

Task: You are required to implement the solution of the above problem using any of the concepts covered in class. You may choose a language of your own choice. Once implemented, explain the solution in details in the word file with the main part of the code where mutual exclusion has been implemented. Also submit the screen shot of the solution.

Discussion what is the tool used, how many and how is it working