n computer science, deadlock refers to a specific condition when two or more processes are each waiting for another to release a resource, or more than two processes are waiting for resources in a circular chain (see Necessary conditions). Deadlock is a common problem in multiprocessing where many processes share a specific type of mutually exclusive resource known as a software, or soft, lock. Computers intended for the time-sharing and/or real-time markets are often equipped with a hardware lock (or hard lock) which guarantees exclusive access to processes, forcing serialization. Deadlocks are particularly troubling because there is no general solution to avoid (soft) deadlocks.