1. A method, comprising: performing, by a computer: beginning execution of an application that comprises instructions causing one or more accesses to a shared dynamic-sized data structure, wherein the data structure is accessible by a plurality of threads of the application or by a plurality of applications; designating, by the application, that an element of the data structure is available to be accessed, wherein said designating comprises updating an indicator associated with the data structure to reflect that the element of the data structure is available to be accessed by the application; and using a hardware transaction to access the data structure element while confirming that the data structure element is still an element of the data structure.