Systems and methods for implementing work stealing using a configurable separation of stealable and non-stealable work items

Abstract

A system may perform work stealing using a dynamically configurable separation between stealable and non-stealable work items. The work items may be held in a double-ended queue (deque), and the value of a variable (index) may indicate the position of the last stealable work item or the first non-stealable work item in the deque. A thread may steal a work item only from the portion of another thread's deque that holds stealable items. The owner of a deque may add work items to the deque and may modify the number or percentage of stealable work items, the number or percentage of non-stealable work items, and/or the ratio between stealable and non-stealable work items in the deque during execution. For example, the owner may convert stealable work items to non-stealable work items, or vice versa, in response to changing conditions and/or according to various work-stealing policies.