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A lock-free priority queue design based on multi-dimensional linked lists

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
 [1];  [1]
  1. Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando, FL (United States)

The throughput of concurrent priority queues is pivotal to multiprocessor applications such as discrete event simulation, best-first search and task scheduling. Existing lock-free priority queues are mostly based on skiplists, which probabilistically create shortcuts in an ordered list for fast insertion of elements. The use of skiplists eliminates the need of global rebalancing in balanced search trees and ensures logarithmic sequential search time on average, but the worst-case performance is linear with respect to the input size. In this paper, we propose a quiescently consistent lock-free priority queue based on a multi-dimensional list that guarantees worst-case search time of O(logN) for key universe of size N. The novel multi-dimensional list (MDList) is composed of nodes that contain multiple links to child nodes arranged by their dimensionality. The insertion operation works by first injectively mapping the scalar key to a high-dimensional vector, then uniquely locating the target position by using the vector as coordinates. Nodes in MDList are ordered by their coordinate prefixes and the ordering property of the data structure is readily maintained during insertion without rebalancing nor randomization. Furthermore, in our experimental evaluation using a micro-benchmark, our priority queue achieves an average of 50% speedup over the state of the art approaches under high concurrency.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000
OSTI ID:
1237474
Report Number(s):
SAND--2015-2904J; 583295
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 27; ISSN 1045-9219
Publisher:
IEEECopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Cited By (1)

Wait-free Dynamic Transactions for Linked Data Structures
  • LaBorde, Pierre; Lebanoff, Lance; Peterson, Christina
  • Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Programming Models and Applications for Multicores and Manycores - PMAM'19 https://doi.org/10.1145/3303084.3309491
conference January 2019

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