Benchmark C04 Dining Philosophers is a very general benchmark. The Dining Philosophers' problem is relatively easy to describe, but the philosophers' behaviour may cause interesting problems, including especially concurrent access and deadlock situations: Five philosophers are sitting around a large round table, each with a bowl of Chinese food in front. Between periods of meditation, they may start eating whenever they want to, with their bowls being filled frequently. However, there are only five chopsticks available, one each to the left of each bowl - and for eating Chinese food one needs two chopsticks.

This process offers a wide range of modelling approaches, analysis techniques, and simulation studies. The benchmark does not fix certain tasks to be performed with a model of this process – any kind of contribution with classical and alternative modelling technique, any kind of analysis technique (from numeric to symbolic), and any kind of strategy case study is welcome. This variety makes this benchmark generally very suitable for education purposes.