COMPOSITE ABORTABLE LOCKS

A lock implementation has properties of both backoff locks and queue locks. Such a “composite” lock is abortable and is provided with a constant number of preallocated nodes. A thread requesting the lock selects one of the nodes, attempts to acquire the selected node, and, if successful, inserts the selected node in a wait-queue for the lock. Because there is only a constant number of nodes for the wait-queue, all requesting threads may not be queued. Requesting threads unable to successfully acquire a selected node may backoff and retry selecting and acquiring a node. A node at the front of the wait-queue holds the lock.