Deadlock is the phenomenon whereby all movement and customer flow in a restricted queueing network ceases, due to circular blocking. The diagram below shows an example, where the customer at the top node is blocked to the bottom node, and the customer at the bottom node is blocked to the top node. This circular blockage results is no more natural movement happening.

Ciw’s has built in deadlock detection capability. With Ciw, a queueing network can be simulated until it reaches deadlock. Ciw then records the time until deadlock from each state. (Please see the documentation on state trackers.)

In order to take advantage of this feature, set the deadlock_detection argument to one of the deadlock detection methods when creating the Simulation object. Currently only 'StateDigraph' is implemented. Then use the simulate_until_deadlock method. The attribute times_to_deadlock contains the times to deadlock from each state.

Consider the M/M/1/3 queue where customers have probability 0.5 of rejoining the queue after service. If the queue is full then that customer gets blocked, and hence the system deadlocks.

Parameters:

>>> import ciw
>>> N = ciw.create_network(
...    Arrival_distributions=[['Exponential', 6.0]],
...    Service_distributions=[['Exponential', 5.0]],
...    Transition_matrices=[[0.5]],
...    Number_of_servers=[1],
...    Queue_capacities=[3]
... )


>>> import ciw
>>> ciw.seed(1)
{((0, 0),): 0.94539784..., ((1, 0),): 0.92134933..., ((2, 0),): 0.68085451..., ((3, 0),): 0.56684471..., ((3, 1),): 0.0, ((4, 0),): 0.25332344...}


Here the keys correspond to states recorded by the state tracker.

## How to Set a State Tracker¶

Ciw has the option to activate a state tracker in order to track the state of the system as the simulation progresses towards deadlock. The default is the basic StateTracker which does nothing (unless the simulation is detecting deadlock, in which case NaiveTracker is the default). The state trackers have their uses when simulating until deadlock, as a time to deadlock is recorded for every state the simulation reaches.

For a list and explanation of the state trackers that Ciw currently supports see List of Implemented State Trackers for Deadlock Detection.

Consider the M/M/2/1 queue with a feedback loop. The following states are expected if a Naive Tracker is used: ((0, 0)), ((1, 0)), ((2, 0)), ((3, 0)), ((2, 1)), ((1, 2)). Simulating until deadlock, the times_to_deadlock dictionary will contain a subset of these states as keys:

>>> import ciw
>>> N = ciw.create_network(
...    Arrival_distributions=[['Exponential', 6.0]],
...    Service_distributions=[['Exponential', 5.0]],
...    Transition_matrices=[[0.5]],
...    Number_of_servers=[2],
...    Queue_capacities=[1]
... )

>>> ciw.seed(1)
>>> Q = ciw.Simulation(N, deadlock_detector='StateDigraph', tracker='Naive')

>>> ciw.seed(1)