We present an efficient and practical lock-free implementation of a concurrent priority queue
that is suitable for both fully concurrent (large multi-processor) systems as well as pre-
emptive (multi-process) systems. Many algorithms for concurrent priority queues are based
on mutual exclusion. However, mutual exclusion causes blocking which has several
drawbacks and degrades the overall performance of the system. Non-blocking algorithms
avoid blocking, and several implementations have been proposed. Previously known non�…