Best-first search algorithms, like the A* search algorithm, find the shortest path between two vertices or nodes of a weighted graph, trying out the most promising routes first. A priority queue (also known as the fringe) is used to keep track of unexplored routes; the one for which the estimate (a lower bound in the case of A*) of the total path length is smallest is given highest priority. If memory limitations make best-first search impractical, variants like the SMA* algorithm can be used instead, with a double-ended priority queue to allow removal of low-priority items. ROAM triangulation algorithm The Real-time Optimally Adapting Meshes (ROAM) algorithm computes a dynamically changing triangulation of a terrain. It works by splitting triangles where more detail is needed and merging them where less detail is needed. The algorithm assigns each triangle in the terrain a priority, usually related to the error decrease if that triangle would be split. The algorithm uses two priority queues, one for triangles that can be split and another for triangles that can be merged. In each step the triangle from the split queue with the highest priority is split, or the triangle from the merge queue with the lowest priority is merged with its neighbours. Prim's algorithm for minimum spanning tree Using min heap priority queue in Prim's algorithm to find the minimum spanning tree of a connected and undirected graph, one can achieve a good running time. This min heap priority queue uses the min heap data structure which supports operations such as insert, minimum, extract-min, decrease-key. In this implementation, the weight of the edges is used to decide the priority of the vertices. Lower the weight, higher the priority and higher the weight, lower the priority. Parallel priority queue Parallelization can be used to speed up priority queues, but requires some changes to the priority queue interface. The reason for such changes is that a sequential update usually only has or cost, and there is no practical gain to parallelize such an operation. One possible change is to allow the concurrent access of multiple processors to the same priority queue. The second possible change is to allow batch operations that work on elements, instead of just one element. For example, extractMin will remove the first elements with the highest priority. Concurrent parallel access If the priority queue allows concurrent access, multiple processes can perform operations concurrently on