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ABA Problem: Lock-Free Stack

Hard · concurrency · Quant Developer interview question · concurrency, lock-free, data-structures, c++

Lock-free algorithms are critical in low-latency trading systems to prevent thread blocking and priority inversion, ensuring consistent execution times. The ABA problem arises in these concurrent environments when a memory location is modified and restored to its original value between reads, potentially corrupting data structures like stacks during atomic Compare-And-Swap (CAS) operations. To mitigate this, developers employ tagged or stamped pointers to version memory addresses, ensuring that