Kas saaksite selgitada mutexi tööpõhimõtet ja selle kasutamist mitmetuumalistes programmides?

Mutual exclusion (Mutex) is a synchronization mechanism used to prevent multiple threads from simultaneously accessing a shared resource (such as a variable or a file). Mutex guarantees that at any given moment, only one thread can hold the lock and execute the critical section of code.

Working principle:

• The thread attempts to acquire the mutex before entering the critical section.
• If the mutex is free, the thread gains access and continues.
• If the mutex is occupied by another thread, the current thread is blocked and waits for it to be released.
• After finishing with the resource, the thread releases the mutex, allowing other threads to continue.

In Go, this is implemented via the sync.Mutex type:

var mu sync.Mutex
var counter int

func increment() {
    mu.Lock()         // acquire mutex
    counter++         // critical section
    mu.Unlock()       // release mutex
}

Using mutex prevents race conditions and ensures data integrity during parallel execution.