Mechanism for passing information between queuing and de-queuing processes

The invention relates generally to the field of computing and specifically to communications between queuing and de-queuing processes in high-throughput systems The invention improves communications between a queuing process and a dequeuing process. Elements are linked and unlinked from the queue using a special locking instruction that guarantees serialized operations. The queue structure includes a synchronization field that is used to pass information between the queuing process and the dequeuing process and which is also used by the locking instruction to guarantee serialized operation. The dequeuing process writes information into the synchronization field for the queuing process. The queuing process reads and acts on the information in the synchronization field. In the preferred embodiment, the information passed between the queuing and dequeuing processes allows the processes to control the initiation and termination of dequeuing processes. When the dequeuing process removes an element from the queue, it sets the synchronization field to a first or second state, depending on whether the queue is empty or not empty, respectively. If the queue is empty, the dequeuing process also terminates itself. When the queuing process next links an element into the queue, if the synchronization field is set to the first state, the queuing process initiates a new dequeuing process.