top k selection in fixed size priority queue with dynamically changing values My question is something of a scheduling problem. I'd like to know what algorithm to use to find the top k items in a fixed length queue in which the values of the items change dynamically.basically a long running online top k selection

I imagine that operating systems do this all the time, but not being a systems guy, I don't know what terms to search for. Thanks in advance.
The problem is known as partial sorting. Wikipedia gives various algorithms, using heaps and so on.