In computer science, a ticket lock is a synchronization mechanism, or locking algorithm, that is a type of spinlock that uses "tickets" to control which thread of execution is allowed to enter a critical section. Overview The basic concept of a ticket lock is similar to the ticket queue management system. This is the method that many bakeries and delis use to serve customers in the order that they arrive, without making them stand in a line. Generally, there is some type of dispenser from which customers pull sequentially numbered tickets upon arrival. The dispenser usually has a sign above or near it stating something like "Please take a number". There is also typically a dynamic sign, usually digital, that displays the ticket number that is now being served. Each time the next ticket number (customer) is ready to be served, the "Now Serving" sign is incremented and the number called out. This allows all of the waiting customers to know how many people are still ahead of them in the queue or line. Like this system, a ticket lock is a first in first out (FIFO) queue-based mechanism. It adds the benefit of fairness of lock acquisition and works as follows; there are two integer values which begin at 0. The first value is the queue ticket, the second is the dequeue ticket. The queue ticket is the thread's position in the queue, and the dequeue ticket is the ticket, or queue position, that now has the lock (Now Serving). When a thread arrives, it atomically obtains and then increments the queue ticket. The atomicity of this operation is required to prevent two threads from simultaneously being able to obtain the same ticket number. It then compares its ticket value, before the increment, with the dequeue ticket's value. If they are the same, the thread is permitted to enter the critical section. If they are not the same, then another thread must already be in the critical section and this thread must busy-wait or yield. When a thread leaves the critical section controlled by the lock, it atomically increments the dequeue ticket. This permits the next waiting thread, the one with the next sequential ticket number, to enter the critical section. Fairness of lock acquisition The notion of fairness in lock acquisition applies to the order in which threads acquire a lock successfully. If some type of fairness is