Differentiated nonblocking: a new progress condition and a matching queue algorithm

Abstract

In this paper, we first propose a new liveness requirement for shared objects and data structures, we then give a shared queue algorithm that satisfies this requirement and we prove its correctness. We also implement this algorithm and compare it to a well-known shared queue algorithm that is used in practice. In addition to having a stronger worst-case progress guarantee, our experimental results suggest that, at the cost of a marginal decrease in throughput, our algorithm is significantly fairer, by a natural definition of fairness that we introduce here.