This chapter describes synchronization primitives in the Linux kernel.

• Introduction to spinlocks - the first part of this chapter describes implementation of spinlock mechanism in the Linux kernel.
• Queued spinlocks - the second part describes another type of spinlocks - queued spinlocks.
• Semaphores - this part describes implementation of semaphore synchronization primitive in the Linux kernel.
• Mutual exclusion - this part describes - mutex in the Linux kernel.
• Reader/Writer semaphores - this part describes special type of semaphores - reader/writer semaphores.
• Sequential locks - this part describes sequential locks in the Linux kernel.