All three are progress failures, but they differ in who makes progress and how threads behave. Deadlock: nobody progresses, all blocked. Livelock: nobody progresses, all busy. Starvation: some progress, some wait forever.
Progress Comparison
The Traffic Analogy
Deadlock: Four cars at a four-way intersection, each waiting for the car on their right. Nobody moves. Traffic completely stops.
Livelock: Two cars at a narrow bridge. Both inch forward, both see the other, both back up. Both inch forward again. They keep moving but neither crosses.
Starvation: Highway on-ramp during rush hour. Highway traffic flows fine. But cars on the ramp wait for a gap that never comes.
Detection Difficulty
Deadlock: Easiest to detect. Threads are blocked. Stack traces show waiting threads. Timeout monitoring catches it.
Starvation: Medium difficulty. Tail latency spikes reveal it. Some requests take forever while averages look fine.
Livelock: Hardest to detect. CPU is busy, threads are running, health checks pass. Only throughput metrics reveal the problem.
Remember: Deadlock = stuck waiting. Livelock = busy doing nothing. Starvation = others cut in line forever.
💡 Key Takeaways
✓Deadlock: all threads blocked, 0% CPU usage, easy to detect via blocked thread monitoring
✓Livelock: all threads busy, 100% CPU usage, zero throughput - hardest to detect
✓Starvation: system works but unfairly - some threads never get resources
✓Traffic analogy: deadlock is gridlock, livelock is two cars dancing, starvation is stuck on-ramp