What is a competitive race condition and why does it occur in parallel data processing?

Race condition is a situation where the behavior of a program depends on the unpredictable order of execution of parallel threads or processes. During parallel data processing, multiple threads may simultaneously access and modify the same data without proper synchronization. As a result, the final data state becomes unpredictable and can lead to errors.

For example, if two threads increment a counter simultaneously without locks, the final value may be less than expected due to race conditions.

To prevent races, synchronization mechanisms such as mutexes, semaphores, atomic operations, and other tools are used to ensure sequential access to shared resources.