Which practice helps prevent deadlocks in a multi-threaded MIPC application?

• A. Enforcing a random lock acquisition order
• B. Forcing a single global lock for all resources
• C. Enforcing a strict lock acquisition order
• D. Avoiding all locking by using only lock-free structures

Answer: (C)

Deadlocks arise when threads hold one resource and wait for another in a circular chain. Enforcing a strict, global lock acquisition order eliminates the possibility of that circular wait. If every thread must acquire resources in the same predefined sequence, a thread that already holds a low‑order lock will only request higher‑order locks, so no cycle can form. This guarantees progress because no set of threads can end up waiting in a closed loop. In contrast, grabbing locks in a random order can still create circular waits, using a single global lock would serialize access and kill concurrency, and avoiding locking altogether isn’t always practical. So, using a consistent, strict lock acquisition order is an effective way to prevent deadlocks in a multi-threaded MIPC application.