Some of the differences between Mutex and Semaphore in Windows CE
Mutex
Mutex
- Is used for Mutual Exclusion
- It has either TRUE or FALSE state
- It is possible that if a thread takes the Mutex, then the same thread can unblock on the same Mutex
- Mutex implements Priority Inheritance
Semaphore
- It can be either binary or counting semaphore
- Each time the thread waits on semaphore the count is decremented, once the count reaches zero it can't unblock on the same semaphore even though it is owned by the same thread
- Semaphore doesn't implements the Priority Inheritance
Spinlock
- From Windows Compact 7 documentation it shows that spin locks are supported as they have added SMP support
